May 4, 2020
Set in 1989, MWA GrandMaster Collins’s competent 12th posthumous collaboration with Spillane (after 2019’s Murder, My Love) finds Mike Hammer still operating as a PI when the WWII vet would have been in his late 60s. That touch of realism allows Collins to dial back most of the extreme elements of the early Spillane novels. Outside a Manhattan restaurant, Mike spots Wall Street wunderkind Vincent Colby as he steps into the street and is clipped by a speeding red sports car. He’s only bruised, but is taken to the hospital, and his wealthy dad, Vance, hires Mike to unearth the perpetrator over Vincent’s fierce objections. Mike’s investigation, aided as always by his voluptuous secretary, Velda, soon leads to a trail of bodies, linked only by the bizarre method by which they were dispatched. Spillane fans will be pleased to see how well Collins captures the brash tone but everyman personality of the latter-day Hammer without trying to imitate the character’s infamous vigilante crusades of earlier years. Spillane (1918–2006) would be proud of how well Collins has maintained his legacy.
March 26, 2012
A clever, fast-moving plot drives Collins’s gritty fifth posthumous collaboration with MWA Grand Master Spillane (after 2011’s The Consummata), which picks up about a year after the events of the debut Hammer novel, I, the Jury (1947). Late one night while on a weekend getaway in the Long Island town of Sidon, the cop-turned-PI and his bombshell secretary, Velda, spot three goons “kicking the hell out of little guy” in an alley. Hammer recognizes one of the three as Dekkert, a crooked cop he once knew. Now with the Sidon police, Dekkert claims, right before Hammer decks him, that he’s pursuing leads to a missing woman, Sharron Wesley, who’s done time for the manslaughter of her husband. When Wesley’s nude corpse turns up shortly afterward, posed on a horse statue, Hammer investigates. Once again, Collins displays his mastery of Spillane’s distinctive two-fisted prose. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.
January 26, 2015
Set in 1954, Collins’s seventh posthumous collaboration with Mike Hammer creator Spillane (after 2014’s King of the Weeds) is one of his best, liberally dosed with the razor-edged prose and violence that marked the originals. The New York City PI has hit the bottle hard after his longtime assistant and love, Velda Sterling, abandoned him with a one-word note. Then Mike’s friend on the NYPD, Pat Chambers, tells him that Velda has surfaced in Miami, on the arm of Nolly Quinn, a notorious mob-connected pimp. Mike cleans himself up and heads south to rescue Velda from Quinn, only to find that she doesn’t want to be rescued. Collins faithfully follows Spillane’s successful formula, including frequent gunplay, menacing thugs, and betrayal. He even matches Spillane’s colorful turns of phrase (e.g., “My bullet shattered his smile on its way through him and out of the back of his head”). Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.