Mike Hammer - The Big Bang

The reissue of a classic Mike Hammer story from the New York Times bestselling authors Max Allan Collins and the iconic master of noir Mickey Spillane.

The toughest private eye in mystery fiction is back - it’s the middle of the Swinging Sixties in midtown Manhattan. Hammer, recuperating from a near fatal mix-up with the Mob, disturbs some drug dealers assaulting a young motorbike messenger who was transporting medicine for a hospital. He saves the kid but the muggers are not so lucky. The Mob and a new young breed of drug trafficker assume he will target them, and they target him right back, with a street-corner knife attack. Hammer and his beautiful, deadly partner Velda take on the drug racket in New York. In a world of flashy discos, swanky bachelor pads and the occasional dark alley, Hammer deals with doctors, drug addicts and hit men, and meets changing times with his trademark brand of violent vengeance.

Mickey Spillane is the legendary crime writer credited with igniting the explosion of paperback publishing after World War II as a result of the unprecedented success of his Mike Hammer novels. Spillane’s novels sold tens of millions of copies - I, The Jury went through more than 60 paperback printings in 1947 alone. In 1995, he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Before his death at the age of 88 in 2006, Spillane chose long-time friend Max Allan Collins to complete his unfinished work and act as his literary executor.

Max Allan Collins is the bestselling, award-winning author of Road to Perdition, the graphic novel that inspired the Oscar-winning movie starring Paul Newman and Tom Hanks, and of the acclaimed Nathan Heller series of historical hardboiled mysteries. Also a filmmaker himself, Collins’ films include the documentary Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane.