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    Killing Man
    Killing Man
    Killing Man
    Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

    Killing Man

    Written by Mickey Spillane

    Narrated by Stacy Keach

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook


    It keeps coming back to Hammer...

    The image of bloodshed in his office remained etched in Mike Hammer's mind forever - his secretary sprawled on the floor and a stranger sitting dead and mutilated at his own desk. In one moment a storm of madness entered the private eye's life. As he starts hunting for the killer, Hammer is haunted by the message left on his desk: "You die for killing me." Suddenly, he is in too deep with a lethal blonde who has big ideas, a CIA secret, another set of murders, and the trail of an international hitman named Penta. Now Hammer knows it's only a matter of time...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateDec 1, 1989
    ISBN9780743562492
    Killing Man
    Author

    Mickey Spillane

    Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) was an American crime writer. Many of his novels featured the detective Mike Hammer. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Spillane sold his first story to a pulp magazine by the time he graduated from high school. He served as a fighter pilot in the army air corps in World War II, and published his first novel, I, the Jury, in 1947. With over two hundred twenty-five million copies of his books sold internationally, Spillane ranks as one of the world’s most popular mystery writers.

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    Reviews for Killing Man

    4.5/5

    16 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Recommended for: Anyone who likes hard-boiled detective fiction. This is a hard-boiled Mike Hammer PI novel, and thank goodness there are many more. In this one Mike Hammer returns to his office to find his secretary nearly beaten to death, and at Mike's desk in the adjoining room is a dead man with his fingers cut off. Mike Hammer has no idea who the dead man is. In an attempt to get answers our PI will be pulled into violence, deception, and evil.There are some dated terms, like addressing women as "doll," but it's no great matter in this intriguing story.
    • 3/5
      For anyone who doesn?t know, back in the 50s and 60s Spillane was a very successful author of noir-type crime fiction. He made his fortune by spinning tales of sex, murder, and vigilante justice. Of course, the critics didn?t like him, but he sold millions of copies of his books, so I don?t think he gave a damn about critical opinion. The Killing Man was published in 1989, touted as the ?return of Mike Hammer,? the protagonist in the most successful of Spillane?s novels. It seemed to be right up my alley (overlooking the dopey title), but after reading it I was left saying ?Eh?? It was an entertaining read, I guess, but the skill and artfulness wasn?t what I expected to be. Plus, the plot wasn?t very imaginative. Here?s the gist of it: Mike goes to his office to meet a client and finds his secretary knocked unconscious and a dead man in his office. A note left on the desk states, ?You die for killing me. ?Penta.? The cops theorize that this Penta character was trying to kill Mike but got the wrong guy. As the story goes on, they learn that Penta is an international assassin (um... kay) who the FBI, CIA, and a bunch of other organizations are after. Mike doesn?t cooperate with them in the investigation and instead strikes off on his own. He learns that Penta had a twin (ugh?), whom Mike investigated and, as a result of that, was sentenced to die by lethal injection. Penta tries to kill Mike?s secretary again, and Mike pays him back by blowing a couple extra hole in him. There?s also some other archetypal characters, sex, and s?more dead bodies lying around, but that?s the long of the short of it. Maybe I was expecting too much from the story, but it left me kind of disappointed. It had some of the hard language I?ve become accustomed to with Noir, but some of the dialogue and action was a bit too contrived for my tastes. That might sound like the pot calling the kettle black, but that?s honestly the way I felt. It won?t keep me from reading any more of his books, but I definitely don?t think he?s a ?master of the genre.?
    • 4/5
      This isn't the best Mike Hammer story. Somehow Hammer just doesn't fit with big international threats with assassins, all the government security agencies, etc. You needed a score card to remember who everyone was. The better part of my rating was due to the fact that it moved the relationship with Velda forward. It is about time, after all these years, that Hammer figured out how much she means to him.Since this was heralded as the "return" of Hammer, you would almost wonder if Spillane was trying to bring him into a more modern type of story, but it didn't work. Hammer should stay Hammer.
    • 4/5
      OK mystery. The first paragraph is wonderful, ending with ". . . it wasn't rain at all, but the sweat of the city." And, to give some of it away---although not everything as a previous reviewer here did!---it is a mystery and not just a procedural. Beautiful women throw themselves at Mike Hammer, but he is a gentleman. There is a passionate description of Liszt's Dante Symphony; as I said, Mike is a gentleman. Computers and international terrorism are involved. And even when Mike is wrong, he still solves a big case.
    • 5/5
      ?The Killing Man? is the twelfth Mike Hammer novel, published only nineteen short years after the eleventh one (?Survival Zero?). Although there are hints that this story takes place in the 1980?s, it feels for the most part like a classic Mike Hammer story and, like every Mike Hammer novel that came before, it is chock full of top-notch writing, vivid descriptions, action sequences unparalleled in detective fiction, and is just plain good fun to read.
      It opens with another dark, dreary day in Manhattan ? somehow in Hammer books you always feel like there are dark clouds, foggy evenings, trenchcoats, and .45s. The most shocking scene of all occurs when Hammer walks into his office and sees Velda ? ?her body crumpled up against the wall, half her face a mass of clotted blood that seeped from under her hair.? Hammer, as always, is prepared for action, and when he thinks he sees someone in the inner office, he has to explode and ram ?through the door in a blind fury ready to blow somebody into a death full of bloody, flying parts,? but stops ?because it had already been done.? As shocking as it is to see Velda, secretary, fianc?, romantic entanglement, on the floor and being rushed to critical care, nothing typifies the hero that Spillane invented more than

      his exploding through a door ready to rip the evildoer limb from limb and make him suffer. This is not your typical private eye. This is not your down-on-his luck detective who is busy talking his way out of trouble. No, this is Hammer, the avenging angel who is out to smite with fire and brimstone anyone that does him wrong.
      Spillane doesn?t spare the reader any of the gory details. Be forewarned. The narrative forcefully describes the ?dozen knife slashes? that ?had cut open the skin of his face and chest and [the fact that] his clothes were a sodden mass of congealed blood.? The six-inch steel spike positioned ?squarely in the middle of the guy?s forehead? is almost an afterthought.

      This return to the Hammer saga is just as terrific as any of the earlier Hammer novels from the gut-wrenching scenes with Velda hanging on in the hospital to Hammer?s sparring and foreplay with the blonde assistant district attorney with the ?cover-girl face and a body that didn?t just happen.? ?You would want to kiss the lusciousness of those full lips until the thought occurred that it might be like putting your tongue on a cold sled runner and never being able to get it off,? Hammer explains. Wow. Another writer would?ve just called her an ice princess and left it at that.

      All in all, another fantastic piece of writing sure to entertain anyone looking for good, old-fashioned hardboiled fun.