THE BIG KILL.NFO
The Big Kill" is the fifth Mike Hammer novel and in it Spillane returns to a smaller scale story than Hammer's battle against the Communist Party which was featured in "One Lonely Night," the fourth book. Hammer is having a drink on a rundown ginmill when a character with a bundle drops in.
Spillane describes this joint with incredible prose; "The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick. Two drunks with a nickel between them were arguing over what to play on the jukebox until a tomato in a dress that was too tight a year ago pushed the key that started off something noisy and hot. One of the drunks wanted to dance and she gave him a shove. So he danced with the other drunk." Wow! Spillane tells a whole story about a place in just a few sentences and his writing is as hardboiled as it can get.
The bundle turns out to be a one-year old and, after dropping off the bundle, the guy runs outside and is gunned down. Hammer is angry that someone went and left this kid an orphan and took the kid into his custody to be cared for by the retired nurse who lives downstairs. Meanwhile, Hammer tracks down the web of bad guys who contributed to the infant's father being shot down. As in the previous novels, you wonder how Hammer ever makes a living without a paying client, but he's busy being like a superhero fighting for truth and justice, not just earning a buck and not just doing what he's supposed to. "There's plenty who need killing bad and if I'm electing myself to do the job, you shouldn't kick."
This novel features the kind if sudden and devastating action Spillane is famous for: "My hand kept squeezing the trigger until there were only the flat echoes of the blasts that were drowned out by the noise of the Carr's exhaust and the futile gesture as the gun held opened, empty."
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