Hammer is Back
`MICKEY SPILLANE books,' says the advertising sheet which accompanied this paperback, 'are now required reading in the writing courses of six different universities.' I can well believe this, because technically Mr. Spillane is a very adroit writer. His dialogue has bite and rhythm; his expositions are lucid and compressed; his flip descriptions of places and people bring an image straight off the page. Action, particularly violent action, he manages to a split second; and there is even an occasional hint of poetry- '. . . if there was anything you wanted to know about the stretch from the Battery to Grant's tomb . . . or [if you] wanted a name passed round the world, you could do it here.'
All this should make for first-class entertain- ment of the Cheyney-Chandler brand. In fact, however, the impression left with me by The Girl Hunters. (my first Spillane and certainly my last) is simply sickening. This is not due to the violence, for that is now a convention of this genre. It 'cannot be due to the horrific plot (hood's murder gives lead to global espionage conspiracy) because such a plot, as in Ian Fleming's Thunderbolt, is too obviously bred of fantasy to arouse serious apprehension. There is nothing very upsetting in the manners and morals, which, apart from the violence, are rather strait-laced; nor in the jargon, which is acceptable in its kind. No. The trouble with this book is that five-star vomit-maker, Mr. Spillane's million-dollar hero, the one and only, the fabulous Mike Haminer.
And the trouble with Hammer? Not that he's a louse; not that he's as sharp and spiteful as a shrike, as clammy and venomous as a toad—all this we've had in others and relished. The trouble with Hammer is that he's a fanatic. He thinks of himself, he is indeed applauded by his creator, as a dedicated missionary, an anointed knight, a ruthless and God-given scourge of evil and 'the Commies,' He's not just a gungy private eye, in it for the cabbage and the quick lays: he is the self-righteous and all-AmeriCan saviour of the world, humourless, ignorant, obsessed; the sort of man who; one day, will tilt his hat back, loosen his tie, reach for a coke—and press the button.
SIMON RAVEN
Previous page
