The Mike Hammer Omnibus vol 1

By Mickey Spillane

Vol 1 contains three novels;

'I the Jury'
'My gun is quick'
'Vengeance is mine'

Not as good as the Philip Marlowe novels, but still interesting. Mike Hammer is a much more hard boiled character, much given to emotional outbursts, often bordering on the psychopathicc and unlike Marlowe and Spade, Mike Hammer is also violent, and moves in violent circles, so much so that corpses litter these stories, left, right and centre.

Having read Marlowe first, I think I've become preconditioned, for I find these books, though entertaining enough, to lack the sense of mystery and novelty that Raymond Chandler was able to create. Spillane seems more like a teenager who discovered a type writer and used it to exorsize his adolescent demons. Guns are great, women are disposable dolls and men beat the beejesus outta each other, then carry on as if nothing had happened. The first two stories were easy enough to solve and I hardly bothered with the third, simply reading it something to do whilst sitting on the toilet. Thats probably more information than you needed, but there it is. I was never able to put down Chandler's novels, but with Spillane I merely coasted along when I had five minutes to spare