Kill Me, Darling -- Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane

Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane are back with another collaboration.  With this book, Collins is working with less of Spillane's original material than in the previous collaborations, but there was still a substantial amount.  As Collins explains in his "Co-Author's Note," Kill Me, Darling is an early version of The Girl Hunters, and while Collins could have used the familiar opening of that novel to begin this one, as Spillane did, he chose instead to begin it with a similar incident in a different fragmentary work.  All that being said, this collaboration, like the earlier ones, is seamless.  It's next to impossible to determine where one writer leaves off and the other begins, and the book is another winner.

Kill Me, Darling is set in the early '50s, and Hammer is on a monumental bender brought on by the disappearance of Velda, who's left him with only a two-word goodbye note.  Two cops haul him to Pat Chambers' apartment.  A cop has been murdered, and Chambers has found out where Velda is.  She's turned up in Miami as the latest decorative companion of Nolly Quinn, a gangster with mob connections.  Chambers thinks the murder of the cop is somehow connected with Quinn.  Almost immediately, Hammer is drying out and on his way to Miami with his .45 ready to go.

Hammer's not in Florida long before he's clashed with Nolly Quinn and Velda, and people start dying.  No surprise there, but you might be surprised when Hammer picks up a client, or clients: four mob bosses who think something's fishy about Quinn even from their point of view. 

Collins is writing a historical mystery here, and he paints a convincing picture of Miami in the early '50s, with its swanky hotels and clubs and homes.  We see some of the seedier side, too, and it's all part of the story that Collins and Spillane are telling.  The less said about certain aspects of the plot, the better, so no spoilers here.  It's perfectly in keeping with Spillane's work in the late '40s and early '50s, and that's all I have to say.  [SPOILER ALERT: I can't resist mentioning that dying words aren't always what they seem to be. END OF SPOILER ALERT]

Kill Me, Darling is a crackerjack crime novel that captures an era that most people now don't remember.  It's the kind of book you would have grabbed off the spinner rack back in the '50s or that might read now in an old paperback with browning pages.  As you know, coming from me, that's a high recommendation.