Complex90Mike Hammer has been the cutthroat detective to inspire cutthroat detectives in our culture for many years, providing a post World War II, mid Cold-War character whose gun wielding, crime solving, debonair traits can be seen in action, detective and pulp protagonists over the years in film, television and literature.   Complex 90, written by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, picks up with Mike Hammer out of the big game and working a smaller scale in the private investigating and security sector, a retired detective who had too many enemies to ever completely retire.  He navigates his way through a spiral of death, world travel, kidnapping, escape and betrayal cast in the landscape of old New York and Moscow, at elite events and the underbelly of societies alike.  The KGB is after Mike Hammer and he’s got a few things to say about that, more than a few really.

While I had never heard of him, or read the books chronicling his adventures written by famed crime-writer Mickey Spillane, I was captivated by this character’s misfortunes, death defying escapades and down to earth old-school detective skills.  Complex 90 is an interesting way to be introduced to the character, his world and his entourage, towards the end of the investigator’s career with him now dealing with the repercussions and relationships built in previous books and I enjoyed this out of context and time adventure with Mike Hammer.

Written mostly by the late Mickey Spillane and passed upon his death to his specifically chosen writer, Max Allan Collins, to complete the missing tales, the book is one of several unique collaborations between the two award-winning authors.  Mickey Spillane brought his detective noir style to the table in each of his crime mystery novels, including I, the Jury, Kiss Me Deadly, and My Gun is Quick among many others in his long career.  Max Allan Collins too has made his mark in the literary field with his individual projects such as the graphic novel turned movie Road to Perdition, his books based on the television shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Dark Angel, and his Nathan Heller detective series as a sampling of his continued works.  Max Allan Collins has collaborated with authors in the past, working with Mickey Spillane material before this for other Mike Hammer stories like Lady, Go Die! as well as succeeding Chester Gould on the Dick Tracy series. Each have had personal success writing in the crime fiction genre and Complex 90 is a great showcase of preserving the story for the story’s sake to make sure it is told.

Stylistically, my only real gripe with Complex 90 is how the female characters are described to appeal, it would seem, almost strictly to male readers.  Every female character has an ample bosom, a body the main character gets a hard on for and they are each nearly panting over our hero.  Underneath the superficial, stereotyped and exaggerated sexual appeal of the female characters understandably, I suppose, fit for the time period, I could glimpse the female characters’ hidden individual strengths and engaging personality.  While distracting, the sexualizing was fleeting and I definitely still enjoyed the more action-packed and investigative scenes of the bulk of the story.

With a great unfolding of plot twists and development, I appreciated how the pieces of the puzzle fit together in the end, with no one and nothing being a coincidence.  The story moves smoothly, and though I wish more details had been given about Hammer’s time in Russia, the sleuthing and evading enemies in New York carried the story’s mysterious nature through to the end as I kept wondering how Mr. Hammer would get away with his next bold acts or words when faced with the inevitable dangers and trouble that his fly by the seat of his pants attitude found him wrapped up in.  While an inspiration for the cultures James Bond, Mike Hammer is not the man himself, and he proves a superior detective does not have to be debonair to crack the codes, have all the answers and get all the ladies.

Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer stories have been called guilty pleasures by many fans and I believe that Complex 90, as the latest in the post humus collection revisited with Max Allan Collins lives up to that priceless expectation.  This may have been my first jaunt into the vintage crime world of Mike Hammer, but I doubt it will be the last.  In his own crude but unfailingly clever way, Mr. Hammer won me over with his potential for trouble, mayhem and somehow always proving he was right.

 

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