38. Killer Mine by Mickey Spillane

I'm not a huge Mickey Spillane fan and he is generally considered a lesser rated writer by hardboiled aficionados.  I think he is also slightly tainted for being somewhat extreme in his language that is a precursor to the right-wing Dirty Harry/vigilante mentality that really came to fruition in the Death Wish cinema of the 80s.  A friend of mine gave this to me and I thought I should give him a revisit, since to be fair, I had no memory of actually why I wasn't a fan of his as I hadn't read him since college.

This is actually two novellas put into one book.  The first, Killer Mine, is about a police lieutenant who is sent back to investigate some murders in his old tenement neighbourhood.  He is a good cop and had worked to put that world behind him, but his inside knowledge is seen as an assett by the department.  The plan is that he goes in "undercover" in the sense that everybody knows he is a cop but he is back in the neighbourhood because he has taken up with an old fling (who also was from the neighbourhood and kind of an old fling) who is still living there.   She is a police officer as well.  Big names have been getting killed and it seems to link up to something bigger in the mob.

The story was okay and I guessed the mystery quite early on.  Spillane also has a lot of weird very dated romantic interactions that I guess were supposed to seem modern and edgy at the time.  They aren't quite as psychologically convoluted as John D. MacDonald but have a similar tone and language.  The depiction of the neighbourhood, it's grime and various locations as well as the characters that live there and even some history was quite rich and well done.  A decent enough read.

The second story, Man Alone, also stars a cop, who just got acquitted from killing a mid-level gangster and taking bribes.  We start out with him sneaking out of the courthouse and getting in a cab.  He was framed and now he is pissed.  The plot here was quite convoluted and I got a bit confused, though I also guessed the main mystery (both involved somebody who was supposed to be dead but wasn't actually).  However, I quite enjoyed the protagonist's journey.  There is some good investigating (which I always appreciate) and some nice tough language.  This one was a good read.

So I'll re-assess Spillane somewhat.  He definitely churned them out with a certain cynical style towards selling books and there is a simplistic escapist fantasy element in there that is a bit too blunt for me to take him seriously.  Nevertheless, he sets a good scene and moves things forward.  There is entertainment here.