Mike Hammer: Kill Me, Darling

Kill Me, Darling, started by the late Mickey Spillane and finished by award-winning author Max Allan Collins, is quite an accomplishment. It is the rough and tumble world that one finds with famous detective Mike Hammer, who is indomitable despite the odds. Hammer, however, is not in his usual New York haunts, instead following his former Girl Friday Velda to Miami for an investigation that is quite a page-turner and a fast read. Readers may not want to put the book down and can probably finish the book in one day.

Velda has taken up with a controversial Miami mobster, and Hammer is there to save her. She, however, though in a dubious situation, puts Hammer off from the get go, even telling him to leave. Velda seems to have found another man, and Hammer wants to know his secrets. He stays there to protect her. Dead bodies have been piling up around him. Quite a scary cast here, with mobsters, drug dealers, assassins, and corrupt police officers, in a town which is not fun to visit for everybody. Hammer faces some tough luck in this hard-boiled tale that wraps itself up maybe too neatly.