A Long Time Dead by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media on September 6, 2016

A Long Time Dead is a collection of Mike Hammer stories written by Max Allen Collins, who took over the franchise after Mickey Spillane’s death. According to Collins, they are based on partial manuscripts that Spillane left unfinished. Whether "partial manuscripts" consists of more than a paragraph isn't clear. In the end, it doesn't matter.

The Hammer that appears in these stories is an older and slightly modernized version of the Hammer who was so popular in the 1950s. He isn’t exactly a feminist, but he is less likely to refer to women as “broads” (not as often, anyway) and he makes a point, in every story, of mentioning that Velda is not just a secretary/lover, but a licensed investigator who carries a gun. Of course, Hammer still has her making the coffee and he still calls women “doll” and “honey,” but he’s making progress. Sort of. But really, would you want Mike Hammer to change?

Here’s what you get:

“The Big Switch” - An innocent man on death row asks Hammer for help. A quick investigation gives Hammer all the reason he needs to have a serious chat with the governor.

“Fallout” - A killer who is after Hammer kills a lobby guard instead. Hammer takes offense. Add a dead hooker to the story and Hammer has plenty of reasons to deliver vengeance. The story is most interesting, however, for Hammer’s unsettled relationship with his police detective buddy Pat Chambers.

“A Long Time Dead” - Hammer watched Kratch as he was electrocuted. So what is Kratch doing checking into a hotel? Leave it to Hammer to find the answer.

“Grave Matter” - Hammer’s old buddy met his death in a town called Hopeful. Hammer wants to know why. The answer is more far-fetched than is common in a Hammer story.

“So Long, Chief” - Hammer does a favor for the dying police chief who steered Hammer away from the dark side when Hammer was just a kid. This is my favorite story in the collection.

“A Dangerous Cat” - Someone is trying to kill Hammer (again). It doesn’t take long before Hammer comes face-to-face with his would-be killer.

“It’s in the Book” - A mob boss has been making entries in a book for years. When he dies, everyone wants the book. It’s up to Hammer to find it and decide what to do about its contents. I like the clever ending.

“Skin” - When Hammer comes across the remains of a woman’s body next to the hand of a missing Broadway producer, he proves himself (again) to be a more capable investigator than the police (in part, by following the path that leads to the body, something that apparently never occurred to the cops). This story, less credible than the others, seems like Mike Hammer starring in an early Steven King story.

All of the stories are entertaining, and they all channel Mickey Spillane’s hardboiled style. Mike Hammer fans, and hardboiled mystery fans, should enjoy the collection.

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Kiss Her Goodbye by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on May 25, 2011

Mickey Spillane was a master of the noir title:  My Gun is Quick remains my favorite, but almost equally high on my list of stellar titles are I, the Jury; The Big Kill; and Kiss Me, Deadly.  Kiss Her Goodbye just doesn’t have the same danger-laden pizzazz.  Its subdued title notwithstanding, the novel feels very much like a Mike Hammer story:  edgy, violent, fast-paced and action-filled. 

Hammer was always a bit too self-righteous for my taste, too given to seeing himself as an avenging instrument of justice and too frequently indulging in rants against the many categories of people he believes the world would be better off without.  Although it’s been years since I last read a Hammer novel, the latest installment depicts a somewhat more introspective Mike Hammer than the one I remember.  I wouldn’t say he’s mellowed; he doesn’t kill anyone until about two-thirds of the way through the novel but the body count rises dramatically as the novel nears its end (particularly when Hammer tells us he “passed the grease gun across a sea of faces and turned them scarlet and screaming”).  Still, Hammer engages in less moralizing as he did in some of the earlier novels and his misogynistic opinions are a bit more muted (both of those changes are improvements, in my view).  Plots in a few Hammer novels seem like an excuse for Hammer to go on a rampage, dispensing street justice with his .44.  Kiss Her Goodbye gives the reader a taste of the rampaging Hammer but also delivers a relatively nuanced plot that is both coherent and engaging.

After a year of retirement in Florida while recovering from a wound he received in a shootout with the Bonetti family, Hammer returns to New York to attend the funeral of his mentor, Bill Doolan.  Hammer can’t believe Doolan would commit suicide, despite the terminal cancer that promised him only three more months of pain-filled life.  After leaving the funeral, while riding with the captain of the homicide division, Hammer spots a murder victim, Virginia Mathes, lying dead on a city sidewalk.  Hammer improbably intuits that Mathes was not killed in a random mugging and that her murder is somehow related to Doolan’s death.  Adding to the mystery are a dead hooker, an uncut diamond that was smuggled out of Russia before the Second World War, a stunning Brazilian singer named Chrome, and Doolan’s unlikely membership in a trendy NYC disco called Club 52.  It all adds up to an entertaining, plausibly-plotted story that leads to a satisfying (although not entirely surprising) resolution.

Despite being an enormously popular writer in his day, Spillane was never in the same league as the best writers of crime fiction who preceded him:  Chandler, Cain, and Hammett.  Compared to most other pulp fiction authors, however, Spillane stood out.  Spillane nourished the reading public’s desire for sex and violence using a spare, undemanding prose style that was perfect for the gritty stories he wrote.  We don’t know how much of the writing in Kiss Her Goodbye is Spillane’s and how much is Allan Collins’ -- the introduction tells us only that Collins was working from Spillane’s plot notes, character sketches, and a “false start” -- but it doesn’t really matter.  Kiss Her Goodbye is unmistakably a Mike Hammer novel:  a little trashy, sometimes childish, but always entertaining.

Although set in the 1970’s, the novel is written in the less-than-PC language of the 1950’s:  women are either dolls or broads and nearly every description of a female includes a commentary on her breasts.  Offensive though that might be, ‘twere it otherwise it wouldn’t be a Mike Hammer novel.  It is what it is.  Kiss Her Goodbye is the kind of throwback novel that most fans of old-school, hard-boiled detective fiction should enjoy.  I thought it was well done.

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