Al wrote:
"If Mike Hammer only kills in self-defence, it's by accident,
not intent.
In his own words: "I don't give a damn for a human life any
more, even my own. Want to hear that philosophy? It's simple
enough. Go after the big boys. Oh, don't arrest them, don't
treat them to the dignity of the democratic process of courts
and law....do the same thing to them that they'd do to you!
Treat 'em to the unglorious taste of sudden death." (ONE
LONELY NIGHT)
Al"
Al, You're missing something in Hammer's development as a
character in "One Lonely Night" but it's easy to miss it with
all the "sleaze" to wade through. He spends most of the book
hurt and angry and looking for the reason for his existence,
and by the end, when he solves that dilemma, mellows out. A
little. And as the Hammer books continued it became harder
and harder for him to seek the "easy" solution like blowing
the bad guys away. By "Survival Zero" he doesn't even want to
get involved in a case where yet another friend gets
murdered, but does so anyway because he knows he can't turn
away. Also in the later books, probably due to Spillane's
religious conversion, the bad guys are taken out either by
themselves or some other way that doesn't directly invovle
Hammer pulling the trigger. In
"The Killing Man" Hammer was ready to turn the bad guy over
to the Feds but had to shoot when the guy went for a hdieout
gun; ditto "Black Alley", where Hammer didn't kill anybody,
even those that "needed" killing.
"One Lonely Night", the third or fourth Hammer, still showed
him as a young war vet itching to shoot, and did so very
well. That early stuff may be sleazy but nobody did it better
and Spillane's work is still some of the best PI books ever
written. --Brian
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