Baby, It's Murder: Mike Hammer

by Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins

Overview

Mike Hammer’s deadly final adventure challenges everything we knew about the enduring noir detective in this gripping finale with a shocking twist.

The concluding Hammer novel begins with a 21st-century funeral before flashing back to summer, 1973.

Nine years after the events of Dig Two Graves, Hammer takes another unlikely vacation - this time on Long Island to help look after his partner Velda Sterling’s seventeen-year-old sibling, Mikki.

Mikki must deal with the attention of two boys vying for her affection – Hammer preferring the good kid from a wealthy family over the long-haired doper with an Easy Rider vibe. When Mikki gets hooked on heroin, Hammer – filled with contempt for dope dealers – goes on a rampage. He will find those behind the drug racket and teach them what shooting up is all about.

But a final resolution awaits him in the future at that funeral...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781803364599
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	03/04/2025
Series:	Mike Hammer Series , #14
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

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, feeding the public's appetite for sexy, violent, straight-talking crime stories. He also starred as Mike Hammer in The Girl Hunters. Mickey Spillane died at the age of 88 in 2006.

Max Allan Collins was hailed in 2004 by Publishers Weekly as "a new breed of writer." A frequent Mystery Writers of America nominee in both fiction and non-fiction categories, he has earned an unprecedented eighteen Private Eye Writers of America nominations, winning for his Nathan Heller novels, True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1991). In 2002, his graphic novel Road to Perdition was adapted into an Academy-Award winning film, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law and Daniel Craig. He lives in Iowa, USA.

Editorial Reviews

‘Collins rewrites a good deal of the hardest-boiled private eye’s backstory, getting as close as you could expect to showing Hammer as an avenging father figure as he tracks down Mikki and deals out wholesale punishment to her abusers and their accomplices before a return to the present provides a bittersweet ending… Don’t worry about being overwhelmed by sentimentality: The legendary shamus still kills and maims with the best of them.’
Kirkus Reviews




PRAISE FOR MICKEY SPILLANE


Mike Hammer is an icon of our culture.
- The New York Times


A superb writer. Spillane is one of the century’s bestselling authors.
- The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)



PRAISE FOR MAX ALLAN COLLINS


[Collins] has no problem serving up Hammer the same way Spillane did, with plenty of mayhem, violence, and sex, dished out in straight-ahead, no-frills prose, right on target, so direct, with no room for sissy stuff like digressions, detours, or doubts. Hammer is a shark that needs to keep swimming to survive, and Collins tosses plenty of chum into these waters... It's the real deal, folks: primo, primal detective fiction. Pass the peanuts.
- Mystery Scene


Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st century Mickey Spillane.
- ThisWeek (Ohio)


Collins’ witty, hardboiled prose would make Raymond Chandler proud.
- Entertainment Weekly

From the Publisher

2025-01-18
In his 15th and reportedly final completion of Mike Hammer cases left unfinished at Spillane’s death, Collins immerses Mike in the tribulations of his 17-year-old goddaughter. Yes, really.

After a prologue taking place in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery at the funeral of Velda, Hammer’s secretary, partner, lover, and eventual wife, Mike recalls the days in the 1970s when Velda’s kid sister, Mikki Sterling, went from being a hot high school tennis prospect to losing her matches, losing interest in the sport, and letting her grades slide precipitously. Mark Traynor, Mikki’s tennis coach, can offer no explanation for the crash-up, which Hammer traces to her continued attachment to Brian Ellis, her one-armed bad-boy ex-boyfriend, even as she’s pursuing a hot romance with Garrett Andrew Williams the Second, who boasts all the advantages of wealth and family connections that Brian lacks. The discovery that Mikki, like every other member of her generation, is using drugs shocks the hard-bitten Hammer a lot more than you might expect. His plans to get her into rehab are upended when he’s kidnapped by two hoodlums and escapes to find Velda beaten into unconsciousness, Mikki vanished, and himself soon framed for murder. Working from “several opening chapters and some plot notes,” Collins rewrites a good deal of the hardest-boiled private eye’s backstory, getting as close as you could expect to showing Hammer as an avenging father figure as he tracks down Mikki and deals out wholesale punishment to her abusers and their accomplices before a return to the present provides a bittersweet ending.

Don’t worry about being overwhelmed by sentimentality: The legendary shamus still kills and maims with the best of them.

Kirkus Reviews