About the Book

Begins at a twenty-first century funeral before flashing back to Long Island, summer 1973, where Hammer and partner Velda look after her sibling, Mikki, and Hammer goes on a rampage against dope dealers when Mikki gets hooked on heroin but a final resolution waits him at that future funeral.

Book Synopsis

Mike Hammer's deadly final adventure challenges everything we knew about the enduring noir detective in this gripping finale with a shocking twist.

The concluding Hammer novel begins with a 21st-century funeral before flashing back to summer, 1973.

Nine years after the events of Dig Two Graves, Hammer takes another unlikely vacation - this time on Long Island to help look after his partner Velda Sterling's seventeen-year-old sibling, Mikki.

Mikki must deal with the attention of two boys vying for her affection - Hammer preferring the good kid from a wealthy family over the long-haired doper with an Easy Rider vibe. When Mikki gets hooked on heroin, Hammer - filled with contempt for dope dealers - goes on a rampage. He will find those behind the drug racket and teach them what shooting up is all about.

But a final resolution awaits him in the future at that funeral...

Review Quotes

'Collins rewrites a good deal of the hardest-boiled private eye's backstory, getting as close as you could expect to showing Hammer as an avenging father figure as he tracks down Mikki and deals out wholesale punishment to her abusers and their accomplices before a return to the present provides a bittersweet ending... Don't worry about being overwhelmed by sentimentality: The legendary shamus still kills and maims with the best of them.'
Kirkus Reviews

PRAISE FOR MICKEY SPILLANE

Mike Hammer is an icon of our culture.
- The New York Times

A superb writer. Spillane is one of the century's bestselling authors.
- The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

PRAISE FOR MAX ALLAN COLLINS

[Collins] has no problem serving up Hammer the same way Spillane did, with plenty of mayhem, violence, and sex, dished out in straight-ahead, no-frills prose, right on target, so direct, with no room for sissy stuff like digressions, detours, or doubts. Hammer is a shark that needs to keep swimming to survive, and Collins tosses plenty of chum into these waters... It's the real deal, folks: primo, primal detective fiction. Pass the peanuts.
- Mystery Scene

Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st century Mickey Spillane.
- ThisWeek (Ohio)

Collins' witty, hardboiled prose would make Raymond Chandler proud.
- Entertainment Weekly

About the Author

Mickey Spillane is the legendary crime writer credited with igniting the explosion of paperback publishing after World War II as a result of the unprecedented success of his Mike Hammer novels, feeding the public's appetite for sexy, violent, straight-talking crime stories. He also starred as Mike Hammer in The Girl Hunters. Mickey Spillane died at the age of 88 in 2006.

Max Allan Collins was hailed in 2004 by Publishers Weekly as "a new breed of writer." A frequent Mystery Writers of America nominee in both fiction and non-fiction categories, he has earned an unprecedented eighteen Private Eye Writers of America nominations, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991). In 2002, his graphic novel Road to Perdition was adapted into an Academy-Award winning film, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law and Daniel Craig. He lives in Iowa, USA.