The Big Bang [Hardcover]

Max Allan Collins (Author), Mickey Spillane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 2010

Conceived and begun at the height of Spillane's creative powers in the 1960's, and set in that tumultuous period as well, THE BIG BANG marks the return of vintage Spillane. 

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Product Description
In midtown Manhattan, Mike Hammer, recovering from a near-fatal mix-up with the Mob, runs into drug dealers assaulting a young hospital messenger. He saves the kid, but the muggers are not so lucky. Hammer considers the rescue a one-off, but someone has different ideas, as indicated by a street-corner knife attack. With himself for a client, Hammer--and his beautiful, deadly partner Velda--take on the narcotics racket in New York just as the streets have dried up and rumors run rampant of a massive heroin shipment due any day. In a New York of flashy discotheques, swanky bachelor pads, and the occasional dark alley, Hammer deals with doctors and drug addicts, hippie chicks and hit men,meeting changing times with his timeless brand of violent vengeance. Originally begun and outlined by Spillane in the mid-sixties, and expertly completed by his longtime collaborator Max Allan Collins, The Big Bang is vintage Mike Hammer on acid...literally.

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Amazon Exclusive Essay: Mickey and Me by Max Allan Collins, Author of The Big Bang

I'm thirteen years old. On a family vacation. Back home, I've been eyeing the lurid covers of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer paperbacks, but I haven't dared a purchase. Here I risk One Lonely Night, with its cover of a mostly nude damsel. "How old are you?" "Sixteen!" "Are you sure?" I throw down 35 cents, and soon am devouring fever-dream prose in back of a Pontiac.

I'm eighteen. A senior in high school. I've written three novels in the Spillane style, receiving numerous rejections but also encouragement. I've collected everything of Mickey's I can lay hands on. I have written him perhaps 30 fan letters. He has never responded.

I am twenty-two. At the Writers Workshop in Iowa City. My mentor, Richard Yates, encourages my pursuit of smart pulp fiction; others don't. For my thesis on a major American writer, I choose Spillane. When my first novel sells, my Workshop stock rises. I send Mickey the book; he responds, welcoming me to the club.

I'm 33. In Milwaukee, I'm asked to liaison between the annual mystery convention (Bouchercon) and special guest Mickey Spillane. Fearful my hero will be a monster, I'm taken to meet him at his hotel room. "Mickey, this is Max Collins, he's..." "I know Max! We been corresponding for years!" I say, "Right Mickey--one letter from you, one hundred letters from me." We are immediate friends. Soon I'm sitting in his outdoor bar in South Carolina, where he flirts with a pretty neighbor named Jane. She's gonna be the next Mrs. Spillane, Mickey predicts. He's right, as usual.

I am 45. I'm in Florida for the launch of the Mike Danger comic book that Mickey and I have developed. My wife and I are walking along the beach. Ahead of us are two kids--Mickey Spillane, 77, and Nathan Collins, 11. Mickey and Nate are teasing each other, Mickey bumping into him, Nate bumping back. They are laughing and it echoes off the water--hear it?

-Max Allan Collins

(Photo © Bamford Studio)

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From Publishers Weekly

Drawing on an unpublished partial Spillane manuscript dating from the '60s, Collins resurrects Spillane's randy, two-fisted New York City PI, Mike Hammer, in a mystery likely to appeal only to Hammer fans. When Hammer intervenes to save a bike messenger from a mugging, two of the assailants wind up dead and a third in critical condition at Bellevue. After following up with the victim, the detective suspects the motive for the attack is more complicated than the police believe. The trail leads him to a recent player in the city's narcotics trade nicknamed the Snowbird. Along the way, Hammer becomes a target, possibly of a local mob boss, and falls into bed with one of the many attractive women he meets. Whatever his share in this stock crime tale, Shamus-winner Collins displays none of the gifts for character, setting, and narrative that distinguish his Nate Heller series (Chicago Confidential, etc.). (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (May 14, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151014485
• ISBN-13: 978-0151014484
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #637,105 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mickey Spillane (1918-2006) sold hundreds of millions of books. He introduced iconic detective Mike Hammer to readers in 1947 with I, THE JURY, and was named a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master in 1995.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Mystery, Great Book, April 27, 2010

By 

S. Baskin - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Big Bang (Hardcover)

First there was Philip Marlow. Then there was Sam Spade. And finally the toughest and the last of the old time P.I's, Mike Hammer. Hammer comes from simpler times, back when women were dolls, the police were pigs, and crime was rampant. There weren't computers or cell phones, no GPS or email, this was back when if a P.I. wanted a case he had to get his hands dirty and do it the old fashioned way, good old fashioned investigating. And this is exactly what Mike Hammer does he does good old fashion P.I. work to get the case solved.
I was genuinely surprised how much I liked the book.

Before I begin on how good this book was I first want to speak a second on its pedigree. It is the long lost manuscript of the infamous and deceased mystery writer Mickey Spillane, the creator of Hammer's world. With the co-author, Max Collins, being the writer of Road to Perdition and Saving Private Ryan, Oscar winners all. All in all a sensational pedigree.

But even with its pedigree building it up The Big Bang still found room to surprise and entertain me. In fact it's one of the best mysteries I've read in years. It takes a simple easy to spot twist in the plot and goes further, surprising and shocking readers and reviewers alike with the coldness and sharp change that occurred in the story.

Spillane and Collins did great job of continuing the Mike Hammer legacy in this book. It's 256 pages, short enough for a cool summer read and long enough to get into the book and really enjoy it. Besides it's length, the book is action packed and filled with all the great aspects mystery readers crave in strong mystery novel.

All in all this is a great book and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick entertaining summer read, especially mystery lovers.

[...]

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Maybe I outgrew Spillane, June 13, 2010

By 

Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Big Bang (Hardcover)

I remember reading the first Mickey Spillane novel "I the Jury" when it came out in 1947. It was such an exciting adventure for a youngster that I can still picture showing my copy to my friends in the school yard. We enjoyed the hard language, the action, Hammer's view of life, and the sex. In fact, we liked the picture of Mike Hammer doing whatever he was doing. Later, I read all of the Spillane novels and enjoyed every one.
When I went to college and had to write a story in the English literature class, I was still so influenced by Spillane's writing style that even though I never intended it, I was surprized when the professor gave me an A for doing a spoof on Mickey Spillane.
And so when this book appeared, I wondered what my reaction would be after so many years.
I recognized the hard writing, the Hammer attitude, and the Spillane-type sex, but I was disappointed. It seemed to me that the writer - either Spillane or Collins, the co-author of this volume who added material after Spillane's death - was spending too much time to copy the Spillane style. Although this may be an exageration, I felt that the book could have said all that it should say and have a far greater impact, if it had said it in one-third of the 246 pages; it would have been a great hard-hitting tale if it was limited to about 80 pages.
Perhaps Spillane also felt that he spent too much time on words rather than action, and this is why he never published it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well orchestrated for maximum impact, February 16, 2011

By 

Craig Clarke "Living After Midnight: Hard and... (New England) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Big Bang (Hardcover)

Mike Hammer went to Florida to recover from a stab wound from one of Junior Evello's boys -- Junior is the nephew of Carl Evello from Kiss Me, Deadly -- "that had opened my side like somebody wanted to slip in there and hide." On his first day back in Manhattan, he chances across hospital messenger Billy Blue being jumped by drug dealers who think he can get them easy access to the hospital's drug stash, and Hammer quickly dispatches the assailants with his signature brand of street justice.

It looks like Evello might be involved, but Hammer assures Homicide captain (and long-time friend) Pat Chambers that he has no interest in the case. Of course, when somebody tried to kill Mike, he gets interested fast. Now it's on.

The Big Bang is one of the handful of unfinished manuscripts Mickey Spillane entrusted to Max Allan Collins upon his death in 2006. Two others have been published previously: the non-Hammer Dead Street and the "last" Hammer novel chronologically, The Goliath Bone.

In addition to being about one-third complete, The Big Bang was also fully outlined and included the ending, which was one of Spillane's favorites. When the deadline for this book was approaching and it did not look like he could finish it, Spillane took the previously shelved "second" Hammer novel For Whom the Gods Would Destroy (he had written it after I, the Jury but quickly pounded out My Gun Is Quick as a followup instead), updated it with references to more recent cases, and sent that one in. It would be published under the title The Twisted Thing.

Spillane's and Collins's styles mesh well throughout The Big Bang, since Collins expanded Spillane's original one-third out to about one-half and then completed what was missing. Collins has somehow managed to produce a novel that is firmly grounded in the 1960s but does not feel dated. This is not an artifact, but a fully vital modern novel.

Collins stays mostly in the background, preferring to let his friend and mentor shine from beyond. Those who have followed Hammer through numerous adventures will appreciate it most, but The Big Bang can be enjoyed even by those relatively new to the detective.

One definite highlight is the climax, when Hammer unwittingly drops acid and sees his potential final moments with all the clarity of a warped record. ("Shotgun" by Junior Walker and the All-Stars gets a prominent role in the melee.)

But the ending of The Big Bang is just stunning, related to a huge shipment of heroin coming into the city (the "big bang" of the title -- sorry physics fans, no beginning-of-the-universe theories discussed in these pages*). It may in fact be one of the best of the series. Just don't try to skip ahead and read it because you won't understand its significance unless you've read the rest of the book. The whole thing is well orchestrated for maximum impact. It's a keeper and one that will likely go down as one of the more memorable.

At least one more of these Spillane/Collins collaborations (Kiss Her Goodbye) is already scheduled to be published. There are at least three more substantial manuscripts that could be completed: Complex 90 (a sequel to The Girl Hunters), Lady Go Die!, and King of the Weeds. However, whether these see their way into print depends, like all things in publishing, on how well these sell, so support them however you can (preferably with your wallet) and help Spillane's legacy continue well into the future.

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*Try What's Next?: Dispatches from the Future of Science for that -- specifically Sean Carroll's "Our Place in an Unnatural Universe."