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ximacloudx's review
I read this so I could listen to the I Don't Even Own A Television podcast, and also listened to the abridged audiobook so I don't feel like I could give it a star rating.
kelspe's review
2.0
So much testosterone. Classic noir is not my thing but I needed to fill the square on my Halloween bingo card. It did remind me of a cop show in the 80s my parents would watch and when I looked it up I realized that's because they made a tv show surrounding Mike Hammer. I wonder if it was as sexist as the book? I am going to guess, yes. It was the 80s. I didn't care for Mike always threatening to "swat" or rough up women but again I guess it's the product of it's culture.
ulabear's review against another edition
3.0
Read as Mystery selection for Adult Popular literature.
Hard-boiled mystery with a tough detective and a lot of slang I'm not sure I understood.
Hard-boiled mystery with a tough detective and a lot of slang I'm not sure I understood.
subash's review against another edition
1.0
I remember reading this as a kid and being totally underwhelmed. I read it on the heels of three dozen James Hadley Chase who I think is still the best when it comes to writing pulp fiction but not to go off on that tangential.
Mike Hammer comes across more vigilante than detective in this novel. The cast of characters, and more importantly their motivations is definitely as underwhelming as it can get. And the mystery itself is anything but. More importantly the writing in this book is as puerile as they come. The sex is not to put too fine a point on it cheesy to the core, the violence totally trite and frankly couldn't be less relevant to the score.
While I get that this stuff is probably way past it's sell by date I still don't quite understand why Pat, a seemingly tough and really smart cop would bend over backwards for a hamfisted PI who seems to have all the subtlety of a rhino on a rampage. Also makes no sense that despite this being the forties and all, why Mike Hammer thinks he can get away with murder ... the first yes was self defence, but then again he was breaking and entering and the second well the second was murder plain and simple. Maybe the bourbon swilling, trash talking machismo and the spoken monologue style of dialogue delivery was the thing in the post WWII times he penned this but unlike Chandler or Fleming who wrote classics from the word go ... Spillane here feels like Derek Raymond slumming or something. Oh well, the man did sell millions and millions and I guess righteous vengeance and easy molls made sense to people like Ayn Rand who once famously said reading Spillane was like listening to a military band in a park.
guess reading this looking for that kind of depth and entertainment is the firsst mistake I made. Guess reading this past the first couple of pages was the bigger one :)
Mike Hammer comes across more vigilante than detective in this novel. The cast of characters, and more importantly their motivations is definitely as underwhelming as it can get. And the mystery itself is anything but. More importantly the writing in this book is as puerile as they come. The sex is not to put too fine a point on it cheesy to the core, the violence totally trite and frankly couldn't be less relevant to the score.
While I get that this stuff is probably way past it's sell by date I still don't quite understand why Pat, a seemingly tough and really smart cop would bend over backwards for a hamfisted PI who seems to have all the subtlety of a rhino on a rampage. Also makes no sense that despite this being the forties and all, why Mike Hammer thinks he can get away with murder ... the first yes was self defence, but then again he was breaking and entering and the second well the second was murder plain and simple. Maybe the bourbon swilling, trash talking machismo and the spoken monologue style of dialogue delivery was the thing in the post WWII times he penned this but unlike Chandler or Fleming who wrote classics from the word go ... Spillane here feels like Derek Raymond slumming or something. Oh well, the man did sell millions and millions and I guess righteous vengeance and easy molls made sense to people like Ayn Rand who once famously said reading Spillane was like listening to a military band in a park.
guess reading this looking for that kind of depth and entertainment is the firsst mistake I made. Guess reading this past the first couple of pages was the bigger one :)
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