Complex 90 -- Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins

It's Mike Hammer against the commies again, and again the commies don't have a chance.  If you remember The Girl Hunters from 1964, you might recall that in that book Mike has just recovered after drowning his sorrows in booze for years. Why the booze? Because his beloved Velda had disappeared.  Now she's back, and Mike is Mike again, battling (with Velda) the dirty reds who held her captive and tortured her in Russia.  Mike unfortunately leaves one of the commie scum with his hand nailed to a table so he can be picked up by the authorities.  Why unfortunately?  Well, let's just say he should've killed him.

Complex 90 follows right along after The Girl Hunters.  The Cold War is plenty hot when Hammer takes a bodyguarding job as a favor to an old friend.  It's just for a senator's party, one evening only, and seems like an easy way to make money.  Sure enough, someone shows up and tries to kill the senator, but it's Hammer's buddy who takes the bullet.  Hammer kills the assassin, and later accepts a job of being the senator's bodyguard on a trip to Russia.  The Reds grab Hammer and take him to be "questioned."  That's their mistake.  Hammer escapes and fights his way across Russia before stowing away on a plane back to the U. S.  Along the way he kills 45 of the commie horde, so naturally they're a little unhappy with him.  They demand that the U. S. return him, and it's being considered.  That's when the story really gets going.  Hammer's going to find out why he was kidnapped.  He's going to find out why the commies are so hellbent on getting him back.  And what about that assassin?  And how does Velda figure into all this, and what really happened to her in Russia?  And what the hell is Complex 90?

This might just be my favorite of Max Allan Collins' posthumous collaborations with Mickey Spillane.  It's thoroughly true to the spirit of Hammer's '50s and early '60s novels, with lots of action, lots of great Hammer put-downs of the government agencies who think they can control him, a great evocation of the times, and a socko ending.  Top-notch entertainment.