The Mike Hammer Omnibus
Mickey Spillane with an introduction by Max Allan Collins
Alison and Busby £9.99
Max Allan Collins (ARCHIVE INTERVIEW HERE) provides the introduction for the book which collects together the first three Mike Hammer novels as written by the late great Mickey Spillane.
The book is presented in a handsome aged looking binding with the text in a font that could have come from one of the original pulp paperbacks and it certainly looks the business.
Max Allan Collins's introduction argues for Spillane deserves a place among the hardboiled elite with Chandler and Hammett and I, for one, certainly wouldn't argue with that.
This volume collects
I, The Jury
My Gun is Quick
Vengeance is Mine
There is also a second volume available collecting One Lonely Night, The Big Kill and Kiss me Deadly - that volume contains an introduction by Lawrance Block. But I've not as yet seen a copy of this volume - I assume the plan is to keep publishing until all the Hammer books are available. Which would be a good thing because a lot of my Hammer books are tatty paperbacks that would probably fall apart if I tried to read them.
If you've never read Hammer before or you want to revisit the series then these books are must have collections. Not only does this volume look nice on my shelf next to the other hardboiled masters but it contains some of the best hardboiled fiction ever written.
Excellent stuff.
7 comments:
Funnily enough, I've been watching Mike Hammer (Stacey Keach) every Saturday for the past few weeks. I think I read one or two of the books when I was at school but it was a long time ago.
Jo what channel is that on?
Nice to hear we've been sitting down in front of the telly watching the same thing, Jo.
I've got this first omnibus and am looking forward to reading it one fine day; I'm hopeful that the stories will still grip as they did 40 years ago.
Nik
Actually over here they only put out the two omnibuses and that was it. Same exact content as the British ones with the Collins intros. The major diffrences is that ours came out years ago with some very pretty ladies on the cover.
Bruce - the UK second omnibus has a intro from Robert Block.
I think you meant Lawrence Block who wrote the intro to the second one. My mistake since its been years since I read them.
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