Killing Man, The - Softcover

Spillane, Mickey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749302720 ISBN 13: 9780749302726

Publisher: Signet 6784, 1990

Synopsis

When you start reading, you smile:
"Some days hang over Manhattan like a huge pair of unseen pincers, slowly squeezing the city until you can hardly breathe. A low growl of thunder echoed up the cavern of Fifth Avenue and I looked up to where the sky started at the seventy-first floor of the Empire State Building. I could smell the rain. It was the kind that hung above the orderly piles of concrete until it was soaked with dust and debris and when it came down it wasn't rain at all, but the sweat of the city."

If you're old enough to recognize the voice, you know that the "I" is Mike Hammer; and you guess, rightly, that since the verbal skills are back, so are the skills in love and detection. If you're too young to know Hammer from anything but the television series, you realize you're in for a treat - and what a special treat it is! For from the moment that Hammer walks into his office to find his beloved secretary, Velda, knocked unconscious and a strange man brutally murdered, occupying the office chair, you're in for one of the fasted-paced, sexiest, most brilliantly plotted adventures the great detective has ever encountered, a tale that leads from the discovery of a mysterious toolbox through involvement with a drug ring, two smashingly beautiful women and the CIA, to a last-page showdown with the villain that could only come from the mind of Mickey Spillane.

In a 'Time' magazine survey done in 1968 of best-selling books published in this century, seven of the top twenty-five were by Mickey Spillane. 'The Killing Man' demonstrates why.

In 1947, Spillane introduced the world to Mike Hammer in his first book, 'I, the Jury'. 'The Killing Man' is the twelfth Mike Hammer novel and the first since 1970. Spillane, who has been described as "the most widely read writer in the history of all mankind", has written a total of twenty-four books, with total worldwide sales in excess of 130 million.

About this title

From AudioFile

In case you haven't experienced Mickey Spillane firsthand, know that the numerous parodies of his style are not much exaggerated. The gritty exploits of gumshoe Mike Hammer teeter on the edge of high camp. However, Hayward Morse opts for a straight, irony-free performance. Although he's apparently British, his American accent is flawless. (Mike Hammer with a British accent would be camp indeed.) Mood, pacing and character voices are expertly handled. Hammer sounds a little young and clean-cut for one with such a long and colorful past, but that's a minor quibble against a thoroughly professional performance. If Spillane is your taste, this reading won't disappoint. J.N. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Publishers Weekly

"I rammed my elbow back and felt teeth go under it and the back of my head mashed the guy's nose who was holding me." Mike Hammer is back, and after almost 20 years, he's as psychotically hard-boiled as ever. Here, there's a dead man in Hammer's office chair. He has been horribly tortured; a note on the desk reads "You die for killing me," signed "Penta." Hammer's longtime secretary and sometime love interest, Velda, has been knocked unconscious and Hammer (no mellower despite the years), goes a-hunting. Gorgeous assistant DA Candace Amory warns Hammer off the case; he changes her mind. Penta turns up on government files as an assassin for hire, a billion dollars in drug money is missing and renegade CIA agents and mobsters are looking for Penta, while gunning for Hammer. Spillane's ( Kiss Me, Deadly ) dirty rain, mean streets, leggy broads, etc. have made him one of the all time best-selling authors--but many things, including present-day New York city, have changed since the '50s and Spillane has, for the most part, failed to notice. Readers will catch the bad guy 50 pages before Hammer does. $100,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet 6784
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0749302720
• ISBN 13: 9780749302726
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192