‘Collins rewrites a good deal of the hardest-boiled private eye’s backstory, getting as close as you could expect to showing Hammer as an avenging father figure as he tracks down Mikki and deals out wholesale punishment to her abusers and their accomplices before a return to the present provides a bittersweet ending… Don’t worry about being overwhelmed by sentimentality: The legendary shamus still kills and maims with the best of them.’
Kirkus Reviews
PRAISE FOR MICKEY SPILLANE
Mike Hammer is an icon of our culture.
– The New York Times
A superb writer. Spillane is one of the century’s bestselling authors.
– The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
PRAISE FOR MAX ALLAN COLLINS
[Collins] has no problem serving up Hammer the same way Spillane did, with plenty of mayhem, violence, and sex, dished out in straight-ahead, no-frills prose, right on target, so direct, with no room for sissy stuff like digressions, detours, or doubts. Hammer is a shark that needs to keep swimming to survive, and Collins tosses plenty of chum into these waters… It’s the real deal, folks: primo, primal detective fiction. Pass the peanuts.
– Mystery Scene
Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st century Mickey Spillane.
– ThisWeek (Ohio)
Collins’ witty, hardboiled prose would make Raymond Chandler proud.
– Entertainment Weekly
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