Customer Reviews

Dead Street (Thorndike Mystery)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Said to be the final crime novel from the legendary Mickey Spillane, the final three chapters were prepared by his friend and editor, Max Allan Collins, from extensive notes from the author. It is a relatively simple, straightforward tale of Jack Stang, a retired NYPD Captain, who, 20 years earlier, lost his fiancée to an abduction and presumed murder.

Now the old warhorse is chomping at the bit, at loose ends, watching his old neighborhood and station house fall to the wrecker's ball. Then he is approached with an offer of a house and $100,000 to move down to a retirement village in Florida, next door to a blind woman who really is the fiancée who disappeared. The reason she was abducted by the mafia was information to which she had access. The data was never found (nor was she).

Moving to Florida, he travels back and forth to the Big Apple to slowly discover the background on the whole story. Written and composed in typical Spillane style, the plot moves forward to a rousing crescendo. Stang is no Mike Hammer, but the story is moving and well-told.

The good news is that this is not Mickey's last book. He was working on several others at the time of his death and we can look forward to seeing one or more of them, hopefully soon. Dead Street was prepared for publication by Max Allan Collins, working from approximately two-thirds of the book, Mickey's notes, and Mickey's conversations.

When I say the "good news" I hasten to add that there is no bad news, except for Mickey's passing. Dead Street is wonderful--vintage Mickey Spillane, with a great protagonist, a great love, a faithful dog, and several piles of bodies. The plot is excellent, the characters endearing and the conclusion as wondrous as any fan might hope. The book is also seamless. Collins has done a spectacular job in completing Mickey's work and we are all in his debt.

Once again, a tip of the hat to Charles Ardai and the team at Hard Case Crime. Thanks for bringing us a delight from the master.

Do not miss this one.

The wire-revolving displays of paperbacks that were present in drug stores in the 1950s and 1960s inevitably had a new or reprinted edition of a Mickey Spillane novel. The covers, just like this posthumous release of the previously unpublished DEAD STREET, were designed to appeal to any heterosexual male on the cusp of adolescence and beyond. The covers matched the contents: Spillane's writing was sexual, violent and graphic (what more could one ask for?). I can remember being subjected to a Sunday morning sermon in which Spillane was denounced, by name, from the pulpit. I was shamed but kept on sinning.

Spillane passed away in 2006 but left a number of manuscripts in various states of completion --- or, if you will, undress. Hard Case Crime, with the very able assistance of Max Allan Collins, has published the first of these, DEAD STREET, a wonderful visit from an old friend whom we thought we would never see again.

This is the story of Jack Stang, a retired NYPD cop whose nickname "The Shooter" survives his police career. Stang is in a lock-step, uneasy march through retirement, yearning for the old days while quietly pining for Bettie, the only love of his lonely life, who had been killed in an abduction some 20 years previously. His somewhat lethargic existence is jump-started by the sudden revelation that Bettie is alive ---sightless and without memory --- and the beneficiary of a de facto witness protection program. Stang is given one more chance to protect her and win her love once again. Bettie's enemies, whose actions against her almost resulted in her death two decades ago, are after her again; this time they will stop at nothing to find out what she knows and finish the job of eliminating her. Stang, however, is not about to let that happen. He does not care who he has to kill or how often he has to do it to see that justice is done and that the one he loves is given a new lease on life.

DEAD STREET doesn't contain a particularly strong plot, but Spillane's trademark action scenes are there, and --- dare I say it? --- he still kicks rear end, even from the grave, better than anyone else. Spillane was credited with (and accused of, depending on one's point of view) saving the paperback book industry in the 1950s. This novel is a fine homage to the man, by The Man.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Here's a detective novel which was about 3/4 complete at the time of Mickey's death, and which has been finished by Max Allan Collins. The joining of the Mickey and the Max material is fairly seamless, and I had to go back and look for it after reading past it.

A retired New York City cop is still brooding over the kidnapping and death of his girlfriend 20 years before, when he suddenly learns she is still alive, but blind and with no memory whatsoever of her life before the kidnapping. This sets off a complex plot, which turns out to center in more ways than one on a "dead street," which is being cleared of all its existing structures--- many of which have important history touching on the life and career of the main character--- so that Saudi investors can build a hive of yuppie lofts.

The action swaps back and forth between a gated retirement community in Florida, inhabited mainly by ex-cops, and the mean streets of New York. As usual in the Mickster's work, the plot takes many twists and turns, and Collins manages to tie all the loose strands together fairly well at the bloody climax.

There are some echoes of previous Spillane novels here and there, but by and large the old master still had it when he wrote this, his final non-Hammer crime novel. Enjoy.

When Mickey Spillane died, he left behind several unfinished manuscripts. Lucky for us, they were left in the care of his good friend (and most vocal proponent) Max Allan Collins to prepare for publication. Dead Street is the only one that will be printed under Spillane's solo byline.

It's more than somewhat appropriate that Hard Case Crime is publishing a Spillane novel, since the publisher whose tone HCC is trying to recapture -- Fawcett Gold Medal Books -- was created to tap into the hardboiled paperback market that Spillane's work unearthed all on its own.

Twenty years ago, police captain Jack Stang lost his fiancée when she was abducted and the vehicle carrying her subsequently fell off a bridge into the Hudson River. Now retired, Stang learns that the love of his life is still alive -- though blind and with complete memory loss of the period before the incident.

Stang is hired by someone who knows of their previous connection to protect her from people who still want what they think she knows. But can Jack stand being so close to her and falling in love all over again, when she doesn't even know who he is?

Dead Street has all the Spillane hallmarks: deep characterization, a fast plot, realistic dialogue (peppered generously with tough-guy slang), and a great deal of sensitivity. Anyone expecting an exclusively hardboiled experience is forgetting what a romantic Spillane was (Mike Hammer more than once let his heart rule his head to the detriment of a case, at least temporarily), and Dead Street is, above all, a love story.

According to Collins's afterword, eight chapters of Dead Street were already complete. Collins wrote the final three based on Spillane's notes and Collins's own discussions with the author. The transition is definitely noticeable, but perhaps only to a Collins fan like myself. Nothing against Spillane, but Collins is simply a more literate writer. He uses more complex sentences and includes more information in them. (This probably comes from his extensive comics work, having to put as much story as possible in those little boxes.) But he retains the tone of the rest of the book (as well as Spillane's signature knockout ending), so it hardly affects the book's impact, and the average reader probably won't notice the difference.

In fact, there's very little at all wrong with Dead Street. The atomic bomb subplot feels a bit dated (even when you consider that the book took ten years to write), but one doesn't really expect a Mickey Spillane novel to be grounded in the present day. Even though he is writing about the last quarter of the twentieth century, it's the 1950s all over again. Whether writing about Mike Hammer or Jack Stang (incidentally, the name of one of Spillane's best friends), his stripped-down prose harks back to the great old days of classic crime fiction -- and that's always a trip worth taking.

Mickey Spillane was one of those thriller writers with a style you could not miss. 'Dead Street' is a brilliant novel from a legendary writer that catches you from page one.

'Dead Street' is nothing but that. It sparkles with action packed vignettes motivated by a desire to save a woman for the second time. As Max Allan Collins says in his intro, Spillane would have been proud.

Gotta love the Arthur Suydam cover too!

Mickey Spillane is what every writer of hardboiled mysteries aspire to become. "Dead Street" is one of the best of the Hard Case Crime series and a good place to start if you haven't tried one yet. It really doesn't get any better than this. A great set of characters, a taut plot and easy reading that can be done in a few sittings and a very satisfying story all around.

Last year, I read my first Dashiel Hammett novel ("The Thin Man"). Now I've read my first Mickey Spillane. I suppose I'll have to read some Raymond Chandler soon ....

Dead Street is one of the four manuscripts Mickey Spillane was working on when he passed away in 2006. He left copious notes on all four manuscripts apparently, and left instructions for his wife to turn it all over to Max Allan Collins to work on / finish / get published. Collins, a Spillane protege and excellent mystery author in his own right, opted to finish this one up and bring it out under the Hard Case Crime banner.

The story, without giving away anything other than what's on the cover copy, is straightforward. Retired NYPD detective Jack Stang finds out that the fiancee he thought had died 20 years ago in an abduction he wasn't around to stop is alive, amnesiac, living in Florida and of course in danger.

The story takes place now, not in Spillane's noir heydey. I was almost thrown off by Spillane's cadences, which seem more suited to a 1940s or 50s back-alley than to a modern cookie-cutter retirement development. Cell phones in character's hands seemed a little out of place to me. A friend asked me if the book seemed at all politically incorrect. It doesn't really. The female lead, although blind and amnesiac, is smart, capable, intuitive and can defend herself. Stang tosses around some archaic terms of endearment ("doll," "baby," "kid") and has the attitude that women need to be protected -- but he's also not such a he-man that he disdains the help of several women in solving the mystery.

This one is definitely worth seeking out. As the tension builds, all the clues are there to figure out what's going on. The action also builds and the action scenes are written very well. It's hard to tell where Spillane ends and Collins begins.

The storyline has been covered in earlier reviews.
This is still Spillane, thanks to the seamless work of Max Allan Collins. The story begins with the imminent demolition of a New York street. But before it is wiped off the face of the earth, it has a secret or two to reveal. The imagery of this dead street is interwoven skillfully into the story's theme and neatly resonates at the end. Intimate first person narrative, fast-paced and involving, the pages turn quickly. The relationship between Jack and Bettie is well developed and indeed we fear for her life and that of her faithful dog.

The dean of tough-guy mysteries is Mickey Spillane. Yes, other hard-boiled writers came first--most notably Hammett and Chandler, but Spillane ramped up the violence with his series of post-WWII mysteries, particularly featuring private eye Mike Hammer. Over the next five or so decades, Spillane's literary output would be sporadic, but he kept writing till his 2006 death. Dead Street is a posthumous novel, mostly written when Spillane died and completed by Max Allan Collins.

The narrator of Dead Street is Jack Stang, a fiftyish retired NYPD cop known as the Shooter for his reputation for getting into and surviving a number of gunfights. Stang has no real retirement plans when he is approached by a man who reveals a mind-blowing secret: Stang's fiancee Bettie, thought dead for twenty years, is actually alive and living in Florida.

Bettie had been kidnapped by mobsters who believed that she had incriminating evidence, but the kidnap was botched and Bettie was trapped in a car that went off a bridge and into the Hudson River. She survived, however, but was blind and a complete amnesiac. She was taken in by a kindly veterinarian who - knowing that she was still in danger - kept her identity concealed.

The revelation to Stang, who still deeply loves Bettie, sends him shuttling back and forth between Florida and New York. He wants to help Bettie regain her lost memory, but also has to take care of the criminals who still want her dead. Though twenty years have gone by, the crimes that took place then could still put people in jail.

Spillane - with an assist from Collins - was still an able writer at the end of his life. At just 200 pages, it bears the hallmarks of a typical Spillane novel: short and fast-paced, with prose that can be described as lean-and-mean. For Spillane fans, and for old-style pulpish mysteries, Dead Street will be a fine book.