Masquerade for Murder by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

I would like to thank Julia from Titan for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for fair and honest review

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now (Kindle) Hardback 25th May

Price - £6.99 Kindle ebook

After Mike Hammer witnesses Wall Street superstar Vincent Colby getting clipped by a speeding red Ferrari, the shaken victim’s stockbroker father hires Hammer to find the driver. But the toughest private eye of them all soon is caught up in a series of bizarre, seemingly unconnected slayings marked by a forbidden martial arts technique.

What do a lovely redhead, a short-tempered bartender, an exotic call girl, a murdered police inspector and a movie stuntman have to do with a scheme that might have transformed young Colby into a psychological time bomb?

I’ve not read any Mike Hammer tale before and to be clear this is based around some work Spillane write before he died and to whom Max Allan Collins was asked to turn into a tale. In this case though I’d say he’s created something that captures both noir and the feel of the 80’s and is a damn fine entertaining mystery with a fascinating narrator taking a look at the dark side of New York City.

Mike Hammer by the 80s is a veteran PI with a huge reputation for solving crimes but often with a number of body bags in toe. Wisecracking and dedicated he is also friends with various police officers and a retirement party for a friend makes him cross the orbit of Vincent Colby - a young very rich yuppie working for his father’s firm. The officers and Mike are horrified to see Vincent mown down by a red Ferrari that ends up making Vincent act unusually aggressively and violently. Mike gets hired by Vincent’s far wealthier father to investigate who wanted his son dead. Mike also starts finding that people with some form of connection to Vincent have also died horribly. Intriguingly a bloody path of victims with crushed ribcages is followed and Hammer ends up crossing paths in nightclubs where people party too hard; film sets and places where gangs plot their next heist. Once again Mike Hammer will be needing his trusty gun and wits about him.

One thing that immediately jumps out is Mike Hammer’s Voice as our first-person narrator. You do have the classic noir detective vibe with gorgeous lines like comparing a nasty piece of work’s mouth to an anus and intriguing descriptions of life and people he meets. But what I really appreciated is rather than a 1930’s detective transferred fifty years in the future we have an aged character who has lived and seen his world change. The novel highlights that New York is starting to turn into the rich cosmopolitan city it will be in a few decades. Hammer is aware that he and his friends in hats and trenchcoat are increasingly seen as out of time and he’s very aware people see him just as a vintage legend. Despite that he’s quite perky and still happy to show people he knows more (and can fight just as hard) as the younger men on the scene. While he appreciates the women he meets its also clear he is smitten by his secretary/girlfriend Velda and their relationship of discussing cases over breakfast all make this feel like noir stories that are aware of the passage of time. He’s a fascinating character and clearly with a lot of cases in his backstory (which I do admit intrigue me now) and when he does get out his gun, he makes us see why criminals are so afraid of what he will do.

But a good detective character isn’t enough in a mystery and it’s also helpful that Spillane and Collins have also crafted a fascinating one. The first half is setting up a lot of strange events which the reader starts to sense are connected and then half way through after the first clear murder the pace speeds up as Hammer goes up a gear and against a very deadly opponent to try and find out what is going on. I wasn’t that old in the 80s but I do love the feel of this story with yuppies, grimy heist gangs and even movie stars called Burt making an appearance. I really enjoyed how the mystery goes from the top of society to its lower rungs - a great gift of detective stories and this feels like the time it is set in. It does suggest though a more televisual approach (and Collins notes the TV series was being made at the time Spillane started this plot idea in his foreword) you can easily see the act structure of a TV movie and how the scenes would have made good set pieces. But here Collins had the budget of the imagination and there are also no worries over censors so can up the game quite considerably. It’s a tasty unusual mystery and keeps the reader puzzled as to who is behind all this well up to the last few chapters.

This was a great fun mystery with a character I’ve heard of but had not previously got around to. It’s got a great sense of character and place and I think Spillane would be very proud of what his friend has created using his ideas. If you’re looking for a thriller to take you away from it all then this would be well worth a look.