Customer Reviews

Vengeance is Mine

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This is an excellent book for anyone who likes old time thrillers and wants to read a classic. It was written when nobody really wrote about cops or dangerous detective stories, so it is the pick of the litter for risky cop stories. It is about a Private Investigator, called Mike Hammer, who goes undercover with a group of blackmailing thieves. They set married men up with models, take compromising photos and then threaten to show the pictures to their wives if the men don't pay up. Mike Hammer ends up meeting one of the unlucky men, who had recognized the model he was set up with, only the man ends up dead the next morning. Since Mike Hammer is in the same room as him the D.A. wrongly charges the P.I. with murder. The charge can't stick because the killing was made to look like suicide but Mike gets mad at the D.A. and consequently loses his license. But this is one tough P.I. and he is not going to let it go at that. He ends up searching the streets for the killer and runs himself into a whole mess of trouble that turns out revealing many strange characters.
This is also a good book for any one who likes the Film Noir genre, characterized by complex characters that don't make any sense in the beginning, especially for a young reader like myself. In the end everything came clear and because they were complex it made the story that much more thrilling and exciting. I would recommend this to anyone who likes fast paced and dark characters and a twisting tale filled with suspense.

Mike Hammer is awaken in a hotel room being slapped by a detective in VENGEANCE IS MINE by Mickey Spillane. His army friend whit whom he spent the evening drinking and remembering is dead beside the bed. Chester Wheeler's death is ruled a suicide as Mike's gun was the instrument of death and it is in the man's hand.
Mike is shaken when the DA takes his license and his gun though it is proven that Mike didn't fire the gun. When Homicide Captain Pat Chambers empties the gun there are only four bullets. Mike's gun alway held six -- Wheeler's death wasn't a suicide, but murder.
Without a licence Mike takes to the streets while his secretary Velma become the boss. Their search through the underworld and society's play grounds opens a simple murder to a wide open case of blackmail and gambling.
A fast read of one of the best.
Nash Black, author of HAINTS.

'Vengeance Is Mine" is the third Mike Hammer novel by Mickey Spillane, and the weakest of the three. The plot itself has the usual assortment of murder and mayhem involving thugs, deadbeats, and buxom women. Mike Hammer, most inexplicably, continues to have the most extraordinary sex life. Every female he runs into professes their love. And the story's ending is, well, TOTALLY ABSURD. I sense the author wrote this novel at a bar one evening. Yet to his credit, the characterizations and the sleazy atmosphere the book projects are fun.


Bottom line: probably best left to Spillane/Hammer loyalists.

Private Detective Mike Hammer finds an old army friend dead and leaves a trail of broken heads (and hearts)through New York City as he searches for vengeance.
Not the best of its kind, but enjoyable nonetheless. If you've read all of Chandler's novels, give Spillane a look.