Mike Hammer

March 11, 2013
Set in 1964, Collins’s seventh posthumous collaboration with iconic hard-boiled author Spillane (after 2012’s Lady, Go Die!) boasts a ridiculously high body count. In chapter one, PI Mike Hammer, who’s been working for American intelligence, admits before a U.S. government committee that he killed 45 Russians in the course of escaping from a Moscow prison and making his way to safety in Turkey. Three months earlier, he accompanied Senator Allen Jasper, a presidential contender in need of a bodyguard, to the Soviet Union, where the KGB arrested Hammer on a bogus charge. As in the Spillane originals, every woman who crosses the detective’s path is both a stunner and eager to jump into bed with him. Hammer’s brutal methods of solving problems translate to espionage as well as they do to street crimes, but this outing offers more of the same old same old rather than anything new or special. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

April 1, 2013
Since Spillane's death in 2006, Collins has been busy completing the pulpmaster's unfinished work, including Mike Hammer novels from various moments in the iconic PI's career. This one, a follow-up to The Girl Hunters (1961), is set in 1964. Hammer has just come back from fighting his way across Russia after a bodyguard gig for a conservative senator led to Hammer's abduction by the KGB. But now, it seems, the commies have followed him to New York. But why do they want him? Is it simply revenge for the 45 men he killed while escaping, or something more? Collins has Spillane down cold, from Hammer's manic grin to his charged patter with the lovely Velda. And while there are hints the world is changing, Hammer hasn't changed a bit. He's still an unreconstructed, red-blooded American male who holds lily-livered bureaucrats in sneering contempt. It's an entertaining time-capsule, but a little goes a long way. Are there still fans crying out for new Hammer adventures? And will they pay for them in hardcover? That's a mystery yet to be solved.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

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.