With DEAD STREET, Hard Case Crime has given us the final crime story to be credited to the Mickey Spillane. Following Spillane’s death last year, Max Allan Collins finished the final three chapters using the author’s detailed notes. In the afterword, Collins explains that there is another fully written adventure story that will see print, but the fine folks at Hard Case figured the crime novel should be published first.

Jack Stang is a retired cop who has history of being the toughest of the tough, known to be a precise shot. Stang is walking around his old precinct before they tear it down when he is approached by a man named Dr. Brice, who is the bearer of some important news.

This news will both frustrate and excite at once: More than 20 years ago, Stang’s fiancée Bettie was kidnapped and thought to have been killed when the car carrying her was driven off a bridge, with no survivors ever found. Brice explains that not only is Bettie alive and quietly living in a retirement community in Florida, but Brice’s father raised the girl as his own since she lost most of her memory and was blinded in the accident.

Why, after all these years, is Stang just now being given this information? Because Bettie holds some important secrets that could put a lot of people into jail. Also, the mob has never given up its search for her, so Stang moves to Florida to protect her. Once there, he fits right into the community of old retired cops, who refer to him by his old nickname of “the Shooter.” Stang digs around his new area and makes some unexpected discoveries tying the community to his old neighborhood.

Spillane seems to be taking stock within DEAD STREET – that of a retired police officer dealing with his past, then given a chance to start over with someone he lost. The central mystery is a bit far-reaching and reminds me of another Spillane novel.

In the last few chapters – and a few touch-ups, I’m assuming – Collins apes Spillane’s style down to the letter so it won’t feel jarring to the reader, thus avoiding a problem of differing writing styles. It’s a fitting way to close out the Spillane crime output, to which – to be honest – I never expected to ever see anything new. In the afterword, Collins writes how bittersweet this book was for him, but how pleased he was that it was seeing the light of day. So a big “thank you” to the folks at Hard Case for making it happen. –Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• BLACK ALLEY by Mickey Spillane
• BLACK HATS by Patrick Culhane
• THE DELTA FACTOR by Mickey Spillane
• DICK TRACY by Max Allan Collins
• A KILLING IN COMICS by Max Allan Collins
• THE KILLING MAN by Mickey Spillane
• THE LAST COP OUT by Mickey Spillane
• THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• THE LONG WAIT by Mickey Spillane
• MY LOLITA COMPLEX AND OTHER TALES OF SEX AND VIOLENCE by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens
• QUARRY’S LIST by Max Allan Collins
• ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins
• THE TOUGH GUYS by Mickey Spillane
• THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER by Max Allan Collins