The Long Wait

Published in 1951 - the same year as Spillane published his Mike Hammer #4 & #5 - this must have been an opportunity to scratch a different itch. Johnny McBride is a different character to Mike Hammer - but not that different.
This was a cute story of identical strangers, who met up and revenge and the clearing of his name when one of these strangers died. There are, of course, some outrageous facts the reader must accept, and a number of characters who have to play their part to have the story roll out the way it does, but this is hard-boiled fiction, and that sort of comes with the territory, doesn't it?

There are other places to look for a dedicated plot outline, but basically Johnny McBride legs it from the town of Lyncastle after being implicated in embezzlement and the murder of a D.A. On the run, he meets up with an identical stranger - and they are involved in a deadly bus wreck where the stranger, George Wilson gets a head injury and loses his memory. Wilson lifts some red hot wreckage to save McBride, and injures his hands, conveniently removing his finger prints permanently. Some time later, while working together as scaffolders, Johnny McBride dies saving Wilson from a fall. Wilson takes on McBride's identity and returns to Lyncastle to clear his name.

Having been gone for only five years, McBride is known to many in town, especially those who set him up initially, and to the cops. The cops are either too dumb to see that he was stitched up, on on the payroll of those who set him up. Wilson (as McBride) has to unravel the tangle with only the basic knowledge he learned from McBride before he died - but initially has to determine who is friend and who is foe.

Despite attracting blows to the head that would render most hard men brain damaged, he avoids being killed a number of times when the outcome should have been otherwise - skills help, but luck plays its part, otherwise this could have been a short novel with an unsatisfactory ending!

There are dames a plenty, most in a state of undress. There are crooks and hard men, most who end up a corpses. There are scores to settle, beers to be drunk and butts to be smoked. McBride finds his police captain (vis a vis Mike Hammer and Pat Chambers) and after getting quickly on the wrong side of him, makes him see McBride was a fall guy.

I liked a couple of aspects. I liked that we were tortured for 40 pages with only hints of the backstory (although it is noted in the blurb), and I liked that the story wrapped up in the last 20 pages - and before that there were still moving parts. Maybe I have a bit of Mike Hammer fatigue, but I actually liked this one better than most of Spillane's books I have read to date.

4 stars