Mike Hammer

October 13, 2014
What's billed as the penultimate Mike Hammer novel, a posthumous collaboration between Collins and Spillane (Complex 90), will leave even die-hard fans wondering whether the effort to complete the manuscript was worthwhile. Instead of the gritty violence and razor-sharp prose that made the series and its lead iconic from the outset, this outing offers plot contrivances and sillinessâand whether they originated with Spillane or not is irrelevant. As the book opens in the late 1990s, Mike Hammer, who's in his mid-60s, is shot twice as he goes to his New York City office, but the hit man, conveniently and improbably, takes off before insuring the PI is dead. This is but a prelude to a storyline centering on a treasure trove of $89 billion (yes, billion) that Hammer has squirreled away, the reopening of an old serial killer case, and a string of odd cop deaths. Labored prose (e.g., "the sky did a tympani number and that wet gray blanket over the city finally let go") doesn't help. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

June 1, 2014
Mysteries abound in the next-to-last Mike Hammer novel, left incomplete when Spillane died in 2006 and finished seamlessly by frequent Spillane collaborator Collins. For starters, who's trying to kill Mike? Does his attempted murder have anything to do with a 40-year-old case in which an incarcerated serial killer is claiming to be innocent? Or has someone else found out about the $89 billionyes, you read that right, $89 billionin Mob money that Mike has stashed away in a sealed-off mountain cave? Set in the late 1990s, the book reads like any of Spillane's vintage Hammer novels, with the customary mixture of violence and witty dialogue. Fans of the long-running series (which began with 1947's I, the Jury) should bump this one to the top of their reading lists.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

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.