Is Mickey Spillane still worth reading, and if so, why?I found myself pondering that question recently after working my way through My Gun is Quick, a 1950 book that is one of Spillane's earlier novels.The relatively simple story line follows an arc familiar to those who have read any of Spillane's other stories. A chance meeting in a grimy cafe with a streetwalker named Red kicks off the action. When a hoodlum named Feeney Last enters the joint and demands she come with him, Hammer slaps the thug down and draws on him as he reaches for his gun."Just touch that rod you got and I'll blow your damned greasy head off," the private eye snarls, adding in a line reminiscent of "Sudden Impact's" "Dirty Harry" Callahan: "Go ahead, just make one lousy move toward it."Hammer disarms the goon and turns him over to some uniformed cops; then, in an uncharacteristic act of altruism, he gives Red money enough to buy a decent outfit and make a new start. The next morning, however, the prostitute turns up dead, the supposed victim of a hit-run driver.The private eye investigates, initially hoping only to identify the dead girl, but later seeking revenge when it turns out she was murdered. While tracking down her killer and the reason for her death, he encounters prostitutes, thugs and a vice ring run by Arthur Berin-Grotin, a wealthy New York society figure who is protected by corrupt police.As he works his way toward the novel's conclusion, Hammer leaves a trail of unconscious villains and dead bodies. He dispatches the chief bad guy with gleefully sadistic brutality on the last page of the book, just above the words, "The End."In other words, My Gun is Quick is vintage Hammer -- and not terribly different from the rest of Spillane's novels.The book was written in 1950, five years after V-J day. It was a period in which things seemed to be going to hell in ways nobody could remedy: after years of combat and two atomic bombings that were supposed to eliminate the possibility of war, the Korean conflict was underway and U.S. "advisers" had just landed in Vietnam. The civil rights movement was just beginning to rub our noses in the fact that more than 90 years after the Civil War, blacks still were second class citizens. And the Red Scare, playing on American paranoia about a communist takeover, was making it dangerous to sign a petition, join a political rally or become a member of a trade union.The Hammer in the novel is a brute who pounds one villain's face into mush with his fists."My Gun is Quick" has shortcomings that are symptomatic of most of Spillane's work. The rap on Spillane is that he was a bad writer: barely literate and inclined to rely on violence when he ran out of legitimate ideas; his critics disparage him as a woman-hater whose prose was steeped in misogyny.Typical was Raymond Chandler, no stranger to pulp magazines himself, having cranked out numerous stories for publications such as Black Mask. Phillip Marlowe's creator once said of Spillane's novels, "pulp writing at its worst was never as bad as this stuff."With all due respect, Chandler's denigration seems wildly overstated.Spillane's style is unquestionably crude: he is given to repeating himself, sometimes even using the same word more than once in a single sentence. When Hammer is discussing Red's death with his cop chum, Pat Chambers, for example, Spillane inserts the words "kid" or "kids" twice in one paragraph, giving the entire passage a yawn-inducing dullness.He also has a ham-handed way of using slang that can be like fingernails on a blackboard. When Pat comments on Hammer's irritability, the private eye replies, "Aw, I'm sorry Pat. [The death's] kind of got me loused up."The last time I looked, "loused up" means something has been ruined or damaged badly. It requires a direct object (e.g.: this book is loused up, the evidence was all loused up). It is not a psychological state.A little later, Hammer reminds Chambers that they have always told each other the truth in the past: "Sure we've crossed once or twice, but you always have the bull on me before we start," he says. This comment had me rolling my eyes in confusion, wondering exactly what it was they had crossed (swords? stars? their eyes?), and what "bull" was supposed to mean in this context. The sentence is flatly incoherent and should have been revised to make some sort of sense.And Spillane is never worse than when he attempts literary allusion that unmasks him as hopelessly lame. When his private eye blows smoke at Chambers during a conversation in mid-novel, Hammer comments, apropos of nothing, "The smoke it encircled his head like a wreath."Chambers, bewildered, says, "What?""Excerpt from the 'Night Before Christmas,' " Hammer replies. "You probably can't go back that far."The allusion is not picked up again and there is no explanation why it occurred to Hammer or how it found its way onto the page. It just sits there like a two-day old mackerel, attracting houseflies.On the other hand, Spillane is occasionally capable of sharp, memorable writing and his writing was closing in on a Jim Thompson level of quality at the end of his most productive period. At one point early in "My Gun is Quick," Hammer says of his secretary Velda, "I didn't figure she'd turn out to be so smart. Good-looking ones seldom are. She's big, she's beautiful and she's got a brain that can figure angles while mine only figures the curves."In a couple of sentences here, Spillane gives you significant information about Velda's attractiveness and intelligence and his own personality -- that he tends to only notice an attractive woman's physical attributes, but that he recognizes this shortcoming by making a self-deprecating joke about it.The brief passage shows that Hammer is brighter -- or at least shrewder -- that he appears to be. It also shows Spillane can blend traditional speech, jargon and common slang in a way that identifies a character culturally, places him precisely in terms of time, place, social class, education and background, and makes his occupation as a professional tough guy clear.And while metaphor is not Spillane's strongest point as a writer, he is capable of relatively sophisticated word play and shows some facility with metaphorical constructions. For example, while pursuing a villain toward the end of My Gun is Quick, Hammer observes:"I knew where he was heading . . . knew he wanted to make the West Side Highway where he could make a run for it without traffic hazard, thinking he might lose me with speed. . . [but] he couldn't lose me now or ever. I was the guy with the cowl and the scythe. I had a hundred and forty black horses under me and an hourglass in my hand, laughing like crazy until the tears rolled down my cheeks. . ."The grim reaper allusion in this passage is gold, hardly the metaphor that a semi-literate thug would use. Yet it fits the character because it is clearly how Hammer sees himself. And the switch from the plebeian setup ("I knew where he was heading") to the reaper reference ("I was the guy with the cowl") commands attention. It is a shift from the informal ("guy") to a symbolic representation of death that conjures the reaper.It is almost as if Spillane, like his character Hammer, slaps the reader in the face every once in a while, just to hold onto his attention. Either that, or it means Spillane was a much better writer than he appears to be and simply was too lazy to sharpen his material and make it sing.Which brings me, indirectly, back to my original question: if his plots are programmatic, the villains uni-dimensional and his writing erratic, is Spillane's stuff still worth reading in the 21st century?The short answer is, yes. Perhaps the best reason for picking up Spillane's thrillers is the need to understand their place in popular culture -- the historical fact that they reflect the beginning of a sea-change in American social attitudes in the post-war period.Though despised by critics, Mike Hammer is the modern lone gunman, the vigilante whose muscle-bound sense of morality forces him to oppose wrongdoing, and whose blind good fortune always leads him to the real criminals, regardless of how much the evidence may point to somebody else.Spillane -- who honed his skills writing for comic books, a literary form that is often dependent on individual heroes who act outside the law -- damned near created the modern vigilante genre. In Spillane novels like "My Gun is Quick," the system has broken down beyond repair: police are impotent or corrupt, rich men benefit from organized crime, bad people get away with evil and the judges that are supposed to administer our laws belong to the same social clubs as those who break them.Mike Hammer outwardly seems cynical about this societal breakdown, but inwardly he takes it as a personal affront. He takes vengeance on hoodlums and their bosses because the authorities can't -- and nobody else will.Even an honest cop like his friend, Pat Chambers, is impeded by red tape and bureaucratic rules. His actions are controlled by people who have no interest in justice -- and who use their wealth and legal minions to skirt the law.In other words, despite his fervent anti-communism, Mickey Spillane's genre fits squarely in the crime novel subtype that I call "red noir" -- a story form in which crime is capitalism by other means, and the real criminals are corrupt officials and the millionaires who pay them off.This is why Feeney Last, the knife-wielding, neck-breaking thug directly responsible for much of the mayhem in "My Gun is Quick," is only a secondary villain.If you want to know who is really behind the novel's evil, look to Berin-Grotin, the wealthy socialite who employs Last: in a world in which property is theft, the rich man is always the bad guy; the self-directed anarchist who cannot be controlled but insists on fighting the power, no matter what happens, is his worst nightmare.
A toughest roughest American PI Mike Hammer is back in action. By pure accident he met a prostitute who is drop-dead gorgeous like every single woman in the series. She was instantly drawn to him like every single woman in the series. Our PI was moved by her situation and gave her some money hoping she would abandon her (world oldest) profession and start living a decent life. She ended up dead instead and Mick Hammer is royally pissed off. For those unfamiliar with the character I can give a very simple and easy explanation of what pissed off Make Hammer looks like. To put it simply I am sure this guy was inspired by our tough PI: Yes, I wanted to be fair to Mickey Spillane and checked: Hulk appeared after the first books of this series were published. Come to think of it, forget my explanation: Huck is a real wimp compared to Mike Hammer as I have no doubts who would win in one-on-one fight (hint: not a green weakling). As I already mentioned when our PI does not fight bad guys he fights gorgeous women who jump at him at literally every single page. These are fights where he usually ends up losing - he does not try hard. I can imagine him looking like the following in the eyes of every single woman:As to the guy's mental abilities I am sorry to say, he completely justifies his last name - I was able to figure out the identity of villain way before him. He could prevent a couple of deaths by being a little smarter by the way. It is easy to guess the characterization is not the strongest part of the series and even the best written characters are only two-dimensional. Regarding the dialog, I actually enjoyed it when it was cheesy because when it was not cheesy it was wooden. Those familiar with my review of the first book can see that not much changed since then. I always insist that every person has a right to have his/her own opinion - regarding literature - and I would never fault that opinion, but I warn you all: if you ever mention Mickey Spillane in the same sentence as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, or Ross Macdonald I will de-friend you instantly and without any regret. The latter three were undisputed classics of noir mystery; the former was a talentless hack. As you can easily guess from the descriptions above I am done with the series. Now that I stopped my bashing I would like to mention that despite everything I said the book has some strange charm. I did not get bored reading it; I almost drowned in cheese, but that is another story. When it comes to being stuck on a desert island with only one book I can think of countless examples of worse ones. I even felt generous at one point and almost rated it with 2.5 stars, but I realized that it would mean I have to read the next book and I was not that generous. Do not even try to start your acquaintance with noir mystery by reading this. Read anything by the three classics of the genre I mentioned above.
What do You think about My Gun Is Quick (2015)?
Not as good as the first book, but still a fun read. Spillane tears through the plot with an even more psychopathic Hammer to solve a girls murder. The main problem with the book is the mystery is easily guessed at, so it takes a bit of the suspense out of it. Now whether that's caused from lazy writing or this book being ripped off so often in the past 50 years, I don't know, but as a modern reader it felt a bit hack. That said, it is fun and Spillane has an insane way with words so I'll be back for number 3.
—Russell Grant
This is the second Mike Hammer book by Mickey Spillane and it is also the second book in the Mike Hammer Collection volume that I bought. In most aspects this book is similar to the first book which is to say that it is, to me at least, a good enough but not fantastic crime story about a hard-boiled, womanizing private eye.I think I liked this book a little bit better than the first one though. The first one felt a bit more insecure which of course would not be that surprising since it was the first book in the series. The relationship between Pat and Mike is more developed in this book in that it is not so much Mike being able to do whatever he wants and then call Pat to clean up. Of course Mike does that anyway but that is besides the point. I have to say that the story was rather predictable though. It was certainly no surprise when the real bad guy was revealed.Mike does still fall for every good-looking female that crosses his path though which is a wee bit ridiculous. I have seen a lot of people complaining about Mike Hammer being sexist, misogynist and other variations of the same thing. As far as I am concerned that is just a load of BS. If anything Mike treats women well, at least unless they are one of the bad guys. When reading a 65-year-old book one should perhaps not be surprised that it describes a world which is not holding to the standards of the modern world. Especially not the political correctness crap we have way too much of today.Bottom line for me is that his is a readworthy book but perhaps more of a TV-series type of book than a classical masterpiece.
—Per Gunnar
Ended up skimming this. I know I was reassured that this was a bit better than the first book, but I wasn't ready to be charitable. Hammett and Chandler can be bad enough, but Mickey Spillane's misogynism really got my goat in a way they didn't do (almost made worse by Velda being a decent woman, because of all the jokes about Hammer marrying her).Hammer is a good name for him, because he really is a blunt instrument. The book is fun enough to read if you're into noir, sex and violence don't bother you, and you can ignore the various -isms and the like, but I could only read it with part of my (over-alert, English Lit trained, admittedly) brain turned off.I bought the first three books as an omnibus, so I've skimmed the third book too, and I have to say, I think it's probably my favourite of the three. If you've got the same omnibus, and you sort of guiltily enjoyed the first two books, the third is worth hanging on for (because Velda is awesome).
—Nikki
