Pick Up A Pulp [22]: KISS ME, DEADLY by Mickey Spillane

Mike Hammer runs into trouble when a sanatorium escapee throws herself into harm’s way in the middle of a road. Narrowly avoiding a collision which surely would've left the escapee a blood red smear on the road, Hammer gathers his bearings only to be confronted with the beautiful and curvaceous blond Viking of a woman begging for his help.

Hammer, not one to shy away from a dame in distress, invites her into his car and they set off, only to run into some hardened thugs with a hard-on for murder. Fast forward and Mike’s in the hospital with Velda, secretary and budding PI in her own right, at his side with the crazy dame long dead; so begins a one man war on the mafia.

Kiss Me, Deadly (published in 1952) is a violent book even by today’s more accepting standards in crime fiction. What is said on the page is just as brutal as the implied, particularly regarding the opening stanza when Hammer is left for dead and his recently distressed damsel deceased. Whilst the one man war machine is hard to stomach at times, I mean, Hammer isn't super human but he’s damn near indestructible here, it is an entertaining ride which shines a spotlight on Hammer's inner and outer hatred for the underworld; something which is exemplified more-so when Velda becomes involved.

On the surface, Kiss Me Deadly, is a murder mystery that feels like it tries to do too much; there’s government corruption, murder, drug smuggling, mafia ties, and hired assassins. Had this been a straight mafia murder cover-up, I think the book would've flowed better and bumped up the star rating.  

The plot structure is linear so there’s nothing too complex about the book but the various suspects are hard to follow with a number of characters popping up here and there, murdered one at a time until the deadly process of elimination reveals the killer. Hammer reads almost too smart and the braggadocio and chauvinistic ways are cringe worthy but you know you’re bound to get that with these books.

Spillane didn't write high end literature, he wrote tough guy books set in the black of night about beautiful women in ugly situations accompanied by a protagonist with a penchant for murder and revenge without remorse; this pretty much sums up Kiss Me, Deadly.

My rating: 3/5 stars, reads perfectly well as a standalone Hammer book as well as a continuation of the series (this is the sixth installment in the still running Mike Hammer series).