Around the time I entered my thirties, I had a sudden memory blindside me as if I were deliberatley speeding through red lights and only briefly realized what I was doing and should slow down, ease the pace a bit. For whatever reason, men's adventure novels were part of that memory. There was this old bookstore about three blocks from where I lived as a kid and I used to hide there whenever we were playing block-tag or assorted versions of this game. Needless to say, I was never found and usually came back well after the game was over. I would always start my perusing in the science fiction section, followed by horror, and then hit the "literary" section. But for some reason, I never gave much time to the men's adventure series. Maybe the reason was obvious: I was a little kid. But I do remember looking at all the covers to these books: they usually came in one of two depictions. 1) The villian or hero blasting it out with either each other, or other parties; or 2) the cover was adorned with a scantily clad bombshell alluring enough to make my prepubscent mind scrambled for the next few hours or so. I loved these covers, but I knew that if my mother was ever to catch me with these books I would have some explaining to do. So, I never read them. Then, I turned 30. I had already earned an MA in literature, and had already read a great portion of the canon (another rant I could go on for hours) but had never allowed myself to escape into this genre of stroytelling. So, now, every yard sale and used bookstore I pass, I make it a point to pick up at least one or two titles that I know will serve no other purpose than to help me flashback to my younger years, and yearn for all those lost days I could have been reading this pulp. And I have to say, thanks Mickey. Your stories are outlandish, you seem to see women only as sexual objects, and your hero-the incomparbale Mike Hammer-is really a wolf in sheepskin, but I love the two or three hours of escape that you constantly give me. Oh, the magical world of storytelling...
I am a Mike Hammer fan. Girl Hunters did not let me down. I will admit the book got off to a rough start with Mike being picked up out of the gutter stinking drunk. He has been drunk for seven years, the seven years that Velda disappeared. He is forced to sober up and hear the words of a dying man who will only speak to Mike. I thought Spillane took it slow as Mike has to get back on his feet again. He is no longer the big ass kicker he used to be. But as the story progresses Mike Hammer blooms as the bodies pile up. I sped through the last chapter to the end that could not have happened any other way.
What do You think about The Girl Hunters (1963)?
Reading this immediately after Fleming’s ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ was an interesting exercise. In that novel the James Bond format was successful tweaked, and it seems initially in this book that Mickey Spillane is doing the same with the Mike Hammer novels.‘The Girl Hunters’ opens more than seven years after ‘Kiss Me Deadly’ (the two books were actually written ten years apart). In the interim period Velda has died and Mike has become a broken down alcoholic. That’s interesting, as whereas Fleming tried to show a different side to Bond by having him consider marriage, Spillane tries to show a different side to Hammer by having him become weak. No longer is he the biggest man in the room, no more can he comfortably intimidate any tough guy he meets. Velda is dead, Captain Pat Chambers hates his guts and Mike is now a shambling bum – things are nowhere near what they were in Hammer-land.Except, after the first twenty pages, the normal Mike Hammer formula vigorously reasserts itself. Suddenly, within minutes in fact, our detective sobers up and goes on another hunt. He isn’t as big as he once was, but it’s clear that he’s getting bigger and is once again very comfortable with all forms of intimidation. Indeed, the traditional plot is adhered to so rigidly, that the identity of the killer will be blatantly obvious to anybody who’s read any one of the previous novels. These books are brutal and uncomplicated fun, but does anyone really love Mike Hammer? He doesn’t have the finesse of Phillip Marlowe, isn’t as smart as Sam Spade, while the vaguer Archer exists at a far more complex level. Hammer is like a sledgehammer: good to smash things apart from time to time, but not an item to pick up if you wanted an intellectual pursuit.
—F.R.
