RARA-AVIS: Spillane (was: New hardboiled definition)

From: Al Guthrie ( allanguthrie@ukonline.co.uk)
Date: 18 Sep 2002


----- Original Message ----- From: "Brian Evankovich" < brianevankovich@hotmail.com>

Brian wrote: Al, You're missing something in Hammer's development as a character in "One Lonely Night" but it's easy to miss it with all the "sleaze" to wade through. He spends most of the book hurt and angry and looking for the reason for his existence, and by the end, when he solves that dilemma, mellows out. A little.

Indeed I did miss it. How close to the end is it that he mellows out? This is page 157 of 158:
"I turned him around to face me, to let him look at what I was and see how I enjoyed his dying...I had his neck in my one hand and I leaned on the railing while I did it. I squeezed and squeezed and squeezed until my fingers were buried in the flesh of his throat and his hands clawed at my arm frantically, trying to tear me away....I laughed a little bit."

Brian wrote: And as the Hammer books continued it became harder and harder for him to seek the "easy" solution like blowing the bad guys away. By "Survival Zero" he doesn't even want to get involved in a case where yet another friend gets murdered, but does so anyway because he knows he can't turn away. Also in the later books, probably due to Spillane's religious conversion, the bad guys are taken out either by themselves or some other way that doesn't directly invovle Hammer pulling the trigger. In
"The Killing Man" Hammer was ready to turn the bad guy over to the Feds but had to shoot when the guy went for a hdieout gun; ditto "Black Alley", where Hammer didn't kill anybody, even those that "needed" killing.

Presumably Hammer's less of a cartoon in the later books. That's good. I might try one.

Brian: "One Lonely Night", the third or fourth Hammer, still showed him as a young war vet itching to shoot, and did so very well. That early stuff may be sleazy but nobody did it better and Spillane's work is still some of the best PI books ever written.

Hammer's one-dimensional character aside, I thought "One Lonely Night" was a dreadful book. In fairness, the opening chapter was excellent and would have made a great short story. The rest of the book was woeful. Number one
(or should that be minus one?) in my list of least favourite books.

Al

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