Daren
A longer than usual novel from Mickey Spillane - a stand alone story, published in 1972. In 1964 Spillane published a short story "The Bastard Bannerman", contained within a slender book with two novella called Return of the Hood. This is a longer version of that story where 'Cat Cay Bannerman' becomes 'Dogeron Kelly', obviously referred to as 'Dog'. Both were bastards and had come home to deal with family business. There were a lot of similarities, but this novel was a lot more complex.
It felt like Spillane shoehorned a few extra storylines in to this one, padding it out to over 300 pages. He does have a good thing going where he gives Dogeron a backstory without the actual detail, and doesn't share the details until right at the end which was pretty successful. It is also the most sexually explicit of the Spillane stories I have read, there is plenty of sex and a lot of inner monologue about sex (the inner monologues felt a bit of a lazy information dumping writing technique to be honest).
I also can't not mention the cover Spillane chose for this book - his wife (or wife at the time, who knows) nude and reclining with a leg in the air, and the awful title (which has no practical link with the story other than there is a film set involved) which combine to make this book one that can't be read in public.
Plenty of tough guy action, fighting, shooting etc etc, entertaining enough at a basic level. This achieved the usual 3 stars I end up with for most Spillane works!
3 stars.
A longer than usual novel from Mickey Spillane - a stand alone story, published in 1972. In 1964 Spillane published a short story "The Bastard Bannerman", contained within a slender book with two novella called Return of the Hood. This is a longer version of that story where 'Cat Cay Bannerman' becomes 'Dogeron Kelly', obviously referred to as 'Dog'. Both were bastards and had come home to deal with family business. There were a lot of similarities, but this novel was a lot more complex.
It felt like Spillane shoehorned a few extra storylines in to this one, padding it out to over 300 pages. He does have a good thing going where he gives Dogeron a backstory without the actual detail, and doesn't share the details until right at the end which was pretty successful. It is also the most sexually explicit of the Spillane stories I have read, there is plenty of sex and a lot of inner monologue about sex (the inner monologues felt a bit of a lazy information dumping writing technique to be honest).
I also can't not mention the cover Spillane chose for this book - his wife (or wife at the time, who knows) nude and reclining with a leg in the air, and the awful title (which has no practical link with the story other than there is a film set involved) which combine to make this book one that can't be read in public.
Plenty of tough guy action, fighting, shooting etc etc, entertaining enough at a basic level. This achieved the usual 3 stars I end up with for most Spillane works!
3 stars.