Word: mikes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...tough guy before whom all other tough guys go soft, Hammer is also an adolescent boy's dream of the total he-man package. He's also a magnet for all comers. Gangsters and glamorous women fall at Mike's feet, from the impact of his blows or the surly machismo of his swagger. Of course there's a darker view of this unchecked brutality, this out-lawman with a feudal ethical code. That's that Hammer is a bully with a grudge - a one-man fascist state, and I don't mean Italy...
...first three Spillane titles, Hammer graduates from being the legal system (I the Jury) to the police force (My Gun Is Quick) to God Almighty (Vengeance Is Mine). But Mike doesn't think he's God. And the Devil he often wrestles with is himself. As the series of novels wore on, and Spillane perhaps winced at the criticism of them, Hammer occasionally goes into auto-critique mode. What has he become? What made him that...
...Lonely Night, Hammer is brought into court before a judge, who, Mike says, wants only to "drag my soul out where everybody could see it and slap it with another coat of black paint." The judge blames Hammer's antisocial attitude on his military service: that, as Mike paraphrases, "it took a war to show me the power of the gun and the obscene pleasure that was brutality and force, the spicy sweetness of murder sanctified...
...love hard too," a dangerous blond tells Mike before surrendering to his Neander-thrills. (And after a rough night in Kiss Me, Deadly, he says, "I slept hard." Mike does everything but think hard.) He's a hard man the ladies fall hard...
...Mike can appreciate female beauty, especially when it's coming on to him. "With her head tilted back like that she gave me the full view of her breasts. They were as alive as she was." (They shouldn't be less so.) "A statue with dark, blazing eyes and jaunty breasts that spoke of the passion that lay within." (Hmmm: jaunty and chatty.) Everyone's favorite Spillane "babe" line is this one: "She walked toward me, her hips waving a happy hello...