Maybe Retirement Is A Good Idea
I discovered Mike Hammer just recently. I read Mickey Spillane's "Dead Street" and wanted to read more from this legendary writer. So I picked up "The Mike Hammer Collection Vol.1."
In the days of old Mike Hammer was a hyper masculine warrior. He was the face and shadow of justice for the oppressed and the vindicator for the wronged. In "The Goliath Bone" Mike hammer seems more like he should be riding a rocking chair and sipping Ensure.
Mike starts out playing the guardian angel role but soon assigns those duties to some one else. Once he starts investigating the whole thing just simmers. Things never reach a good hard boil. Hammer just seems to coast through letting everybody else do ninety-percent of the work.
This book does have moments of joy. However, each one seems countered by a moment of languid dialogue or absurdity. As a huge fan of the early Mike Hammer books it was interesting to see how Hammer would age. However, it was disappointing to see he had turned in to grandpa.
probably not so far fetched
I enjoyed it very much and listened to the whole book in a couple days.
The Goliath Bone
Mike Hammer is back. He's lost a step but still Mike Hammer. The only thing about this story I couldn't get a handle on is that Mike has got to be in his eighties. We know he was in WWII, so I'm figuring he was around twenty when WWII started.
In his eighties and still hasn't tied the knot with Velda. Come on. Like I said a good yarn but an eighty year old Mike Hammer had me wondering what ol' Mickey Spillane was thinking.
I would have really enjoyed the book more if there were not any mention of the 9/11 happenings and just stuck to the tried and true Mike Hammer story lines of the past.
Thanks, Max and Mickey
Mickey is gone now, but thanks to Max Allan Collins his novel is completed and, thus, immortal. It tells a very modern story about a very old relic--a battle between Israelis and Jihadists for the femur of the historical Goliath. The battleground is New York, not the Valley of Elah, but that is Mike Hammer's turf and Mickey does it justice. The story moves briskly; there is an actual mystery to be solved (which is solved in a satisfying though somewhat predictable way) and the characters are engaging. They're up in years now--Mike, Velda, and Pat Chambers--but that's appropriate and it contributes to the novel's ethos. It doesn't detract. What will detract for some is the language. Mike Hammer is Mike Hammer and he has aged. However, while he is aware of the manner in which the world has changed, his language remains locked in 1947 mode. Velda is still "Doll" or "Kitten", though Mike may be the last person on earth to use such expressions. That is a judgment call for the novelist to make. None of us want a Mike Hammer checking his blackberry or listening to Coldplay on his iPod. And we do want him to sound like Mike Hammer. But would Mike Hammer remain locked in time to the degree that his language is retro- while he has grown and changed and learned in other ways (so that he might continue to be able to survive and win). Readers will have to decide whether they find it jarring or deeply satisfying. Either way, Mike probably wouldn't care. That's why we like him.
It's still Hammer
Mickey Spillane may not have written GOLIATH BONE in its entirety, but Max Allan Collins has certainly done his friend -- and the iconic character of Hammer -- justice in completing it. To me, this Hammer feels like Hammer, albeit one nearing retirement and feeling every bit his age. It's a new world out there, pitting the P.I. against terrorists, but a bad guy's a bad guy, and Hammer aims to do away with them in his own blunt, un-PC style. It may be set in the present, but all the nods to Hammer's heyday are there, right down to the no-nonsense dialogue. The jacket's comparison to THE DA VINCI CODE is a bit stretching it, although the plot does deal with an artifact with religious significance, but it's nearly a Macguffin to simply get the thriller going.
