KILLING TOWN: THE LOST FIRST MIKE HAMMER THRILLER by Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins / Z-View

KILLING TOWN by Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins

First sentence…

The blonde dame in the sleeper car window was damn near naked in front of the mirror on the back of her closed door, and ready to finish the job.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

World War II is over.  Mike Hammer made it back.  Many of his fellow soldiers didn’t.  Now a civilian, Hammer has a promise to keep.

Which is why he sneaks under a train and rides into Killington on the sly.  As Hammer exits from under the train, through a window in a car across the tracks, he spies a woman undressing.   She’s a looker, but Hammer isn’t a Peeping Tom and wants to get out of there before the railyard cops catch him.

So Hammer scoots.

But it isn’t long before Hammer is picked up for murder.  The murder of the woman he saw in the railyard.  The cops get rough trying to get Hammer to confess.  Things look bad.  He was in the railyard.  He saw the woman.  He has no alibi.

And then the cops turn Hammer loose.  Melba Charles, Senator Charles’ beautiful daughter says that Hammer was with her at the time of the murder.  In fact, she says she and Hammer are soon to be married!

Hammer is happy to be free.  He came to Killington to keep a promise.  That’ll get done after.  Now he needs to find the mystery woman’s killer.  But first he needs to meet his future bride and find out why she provided an alibi for a man she’d never met.

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KILLING TOWN takes place before Mike Hammer became a private eye.  It was actually an unfinished novel that Mickey Spillane started but never finished.  Max Allan Collins, Spillane’s friend was selected by Spillane to complete the tale.

KILLING TOWN is my one of my favorite Mike Hammer tales… on par with I, THE JURY.  (And I don’t say that lightly.)

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