The Killing Man

Private eye, Mike Hammer, goes on the warpath when he finds his lovely secretary, Velda, lying battered on his office floor next to the mutilated body of a would-be client. The author has also written "The Girl Hunters", "The Body Lovers" and "Survival...Zero". From Publishers Weekly "I rammed my elbow back and felt teeth go under it and the back of my head mashed the guy's nose who was holding me." Mike Hammer is back, and after almost 20 years, he's as psychotically hard-boiled as ever. Here, there's a dead man in Hammer's office chair. He has been horribly tortured; a note on the desk reads "You die for killing me," signed "Penta." Hammer's longtime secretary and sometime love interest, Velda, has been knocked unconscious and Hammer (no mellower despite the years), goes a-hunting. Gorgeous assistant DA Candace Amory warns Hammer off the case; he changes her mind. Penta turns up on government files as an assassin for hire, a billion dollars in drug money is missing and renegade CIA agents and mobsters are looking for Penta, while gunning for Hammer. Spillane's ( Kiss Me, Deadly ) dirty rain, mean streets, leggy broads, etc. have made him one of the all time best-selling authors--but many things, including present-day New York city, have changed since the '50s and Spillane has, for the most part, failed to notice. Readers will catch the bad guy 50 pages before Hammer does. $100,000 ad/promo. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. From AudioFile In case you haven't experienced Mickey Spillane firsthand, know that the numerous parodies of his style are not much exaggerated. The gritty exploits of gumshoe Mike Hammer teeter on the edge of high camp. However, Hayward Morse opts for a straight, irony-free performance. Although he's apparently British, his American accent is flawless. (Mike Hammer with a British accent would be camp indeed.) Mood, pacing and character voices are expertly handled. Hammer sounds a little young and clean-cut for one with such a long and colorful past, but that's a minor quibble against a thoroughly professional performance. If Spillane is your taste, this reading won't disappoint. J.N. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine Version : 4.0 Mike Hammer walks into his office to find his unconscious secretary on the floor, a brutally butchered corpse occupying his office chair, and a note from a murderer on his desk: “You die for killing me.” So begins a tough-as-nails tale of government assassins and renegade mobsters, told with the breakneck pacing and brutal impact of a freshly fired .45 bullet.