A Brief Hiatus from from Epic Historical Novels

If this book is a good indication of the general quality of these Hard Case paperbacks I'm going to have to get them all for sure. The packaging is awesome, trying to emulate those old Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks and doing a wonderful job of it. The cover on this one (by Art Suydam! no less) is superb. The guy with the knife looming in the doorway has some very Frazetta-esque styling to him, but I just love this painting in general. I started this book yesterday and I finished it this morning just reading it in my breaks between other work and I enjoyed every minute of it. I think I have only read two books by Mickey Spillane before, one was called Day of the Gun or some similar title, not a Mike Hammer novel if I remember correctly. I remember enjoying the book, but when I was younger I only read crime, mystery and thriller novels sparsely, basically only reading Science Fiction and Fantasy type novels. Recently I have been discovering that most of my favorite stylists are from the mystery field currently - Guys like Charles Willeford, Carl Hiassen, Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain, etc.

This is one of Mickey Spillane's last novels ( he was working on four at the time of his death) with the last couple of chapters finished by Max Alan Collins. I like the writing in this book, it's spare and to the point with some nice turns of phrase. You get the feeling sometimes in this book that the modern world has passed the characters (and Mickey) by. The plot is the weakest part of this book, the McGuffin being some nuclear material that is handled in ways not even the dumbest criminal would attempt, but for me plot is become more or less incidental to my enjoyment because really there are only so many ways things can play out. I'm more interested in my enjoyment of the authorial voice and the resonance of the characters and I found a lot to like here. I'm going to be reading some more Mickey Spillane novels in the coming weeks, but right now I decided to segue into a Carl Hiassen novel and then I'm going to circle back to the long Historical series that I recently started to read (John Jakes' Kent Family Chronicles and Wilbur Smith's Courtney Cycle of novels).