Hammer knows that he will never be able to escape his fearsome reputation and he also know that most people will never see him as being anything more than a murderer. He’s obsessed with violence and, even if he’s found a way to justify that to himself, it’s still hard not to be slightly disturbed by such a one-track mind. When he’s not killing, he’s thinking about killing. On the other hand, as you read the book, you can’t help but notice that Hammer really does kill a lot of people. He doesn’t necessarily do it for fun though, at the same time, he doesn’t make any apologies for doing what he feels needs to be done. His feelings have obviously been hurt and, as he explains in his hard-boiled narration, he only kills people who have to be killed. It’s interesting because, on the one hand, it’s hard not to feel bad for Hammer. When night comes, Hammer is still wandering around Manhattan and obsessing on the fact that he’s somehow developed a reputation for being violent and quick to kill.

Earlier in the day, a judge scolded Hammer for being too quick to kill people, leaving Hammer to feel as if he was being portrayed as being some sort of blood-thirsty monster. One Lonely Night opens at night and with Mike Hammer in a bad mood. (And, of course, the much-missed Gary Loggins was quite a fan of Mike Hammer and the author who created him.) 1955’s Kiss Me Deadly is probably the best-known. Many of those books were later adapted into films.

(Half-Price Books has a wonderful vintage section.) Originally published in 1951, Mickey Spilliane’s One Lonely Night is one of the many books that Spillane wrote about the adventures of a tough New York-based private investigator named Mike Hammer. That was actually kind of nice.Īs for the book that I decided to read, it was an old paperback detective novel that I purchased at Half-Price Books a few years ago. The snow outside was so bright that it actually generated enough light that I was able to read by it. Even though I had a flashlight with me, I quickly discovered that I didn’t need it. So, I decided to sit in bed and read a book. It was cold, I was shivering, and I couldn’t sleep. Because the power was down (not due to the rolling blackouts that had paralyzed the rest of the state but instead because some idiot drove into a substation) it was about 40 degrees inside of the house. Tuesday morning, around one a.m., the house was surrounded by six inches of snow. As you may have heard, we’ve had a bit of inclement weather down here in Texas.

One Lonely Night by Mickey Spillane