The Snake (1964) by Mickey Spillane

Written in 1964, The Snake was a return to pulp fiction for the prolific Mickey Spillane. Two years earlier he revived his signature series, starring Detective Mike Hammer, with The Girl Hunters, after nearly a decade of forgoing fiction for the glamours of working in Hollywood.

In this novel, Mike Hammer returns to work alongside some old pals in the NYPD, this time carrying a federal badge whose power he continually abuses. The story begins when an old flame, Velda, shows up in town after a seven year absence. From there, a young girl, her District Attorney-turned-Gubernatorial-candidate father, some hitmen, a dead skeleton with a shotgun, and a gang of 1950's muscle mobsters are thrown into a circular, yet convoluted plot involving a seemingly botched bank robbery.

Spillane's major faults as a writer are largely involved with such grandiose plot lines. He relies on one liners to often explain huge chunks of a character's back story, such as Velda's absence: "It took seven years," she says, "to learn a man's secret and escape Communist Europe with information that will keep us equal or better than they are." Spillane's oversimplification, and vision of a spy subplot, hinder the advancement of the story he is telling. Other times he gets so wrapped up in the scale of the world he has created, Spillane simply loses our suspension of disbelief, particularly with the extent of the mob's involvement in a seemingly petty affair, and Velda's thirty odd year chastity for Hammer.

At other times Spillane sounds as if he's already spent his most ingenious plot twists on his seven earlier Detective Hammer novels. Nearly all major plot turns are outrageously coincidental and improbable, the most egregious being the novel's necromantic finale. Despite as much, the quality of Spillane's storytelling is what makes The Snake so addictive, and delightful, including the skeleton in the last scene. It's by far one of the most predictable and yet shockingly hilarious endings to any mystery I've read.

Spillane writes a truly engaging and cinematic mystery, with only a few narrative speedbumps. His knack for details can bring to life the most preposterous of scenes. And sometimes he can be just downright poetic:

"One of the hookers spotted my two twenties on the bar and broke away from her tourist friend long enough to hit the cigarette machine behind me. Without looking around she said, 'Lonely?'

I didn't look around either. 'Sometimes.'"

Hammer's larger than life ego, and infallibility, doesn't carry the literary weight of Raymond Chandler's introspective Philip Marlowe (and far more amusing drunk) or nearly the cleverness of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (whose tale "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is inversely echoed in The Snake), but instead, Hammer offers us pure entertainment.

Spillane often referred to his audience as "customers" rather than readers,and I think I've got at least another Mike Hammer purchase in me, even if it is just for an airplane.