“You on your lunch break?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “If so, I’m drinking it.”
Hard Case Crime continues to mine gems from some of the greatest names in detective fiction. March 2018 brought a two-fer: A Bullet for Satisfaction and The Last Stand. A Bullet for Satisfaction was edited and completed by Max Alan Collins, Spillane’s long-time friend, while The Last Stand is Spillane’s final novel.
A Bullet for Satisfaction‘s appropriate title follows disgraced, ex-cop Dexter as he digs deep into the dirt surrounding the murder of a married politician in a hotel room.
Mayes Rogers was a big name in politics around here-he’d made it to the top, and on the way ruined quite a few. A lot of people would have liked to see him put underground, and maybe they had good reasons.
I pulled out a cigarette, stuck the flame of my lighter to it, and drew in the smoke.
We’re in solid Spillane territory here. Dexter meets the grieving widow and her shapely sister, and offends local politicians as he investigates a case that stinks of corruption. Spillane books, for fans of the hard-boiled detective fiction, are great fun but then there are also watershed moments of brief, sudden brutality: those instances when we are jerked from our enjoyment into the reality of the darker side of human nature.
The Last Stand, written at the end of Spillane’s long writing career, has a completely different pace, with an adventure-focused plot. Pilot Joe Gillian finds himself stranded in the desert when he’s forced to make an emergency landing in his ancient plane. The tale involves Native Americans, the FBI, with a few gangsters thrown into the mix. Naturally, there has to be a beautiful woman–in this instance it’s a Native American wincingly named, Running Fox.
Of the two, I preferred A Bullet for Satisfaction. I’m much more comfortable with hard-boiled detective tales of the 40s and 50s, and perhaps a great deal of that enjoyment comes with the idea that Spillane’s pugnacious male characters drank hard liquor for lunch and breakfast, fought crime and corruption to the bitter, bloody end, and loved women with lingering regret and the knowledge that they’d already moved on. Maybe it’s a Bogart thing.
Review copy
His Futile Preoccupations ..... 
Haha Guy, loved your reasons for preferring the earlier novel. Makes perfect sense to me.
It’s a whole era, atmosphere thing.
Yes, I can see that, not that I’ve read much but I guess we’re talking to some degree about film noir. I realise that’s a bit broader … but it’s an atmosphere too from that era and includes your hard boiled detectives?
Yes indeed, you’re right.
I just attended a conference about the pitfalls of re-publishing old Noir novels. It made me think about you and how much you enjoy the reappearance of OOP crime fiction books.
What were some of the pitfalls?
Deciding how to republish (picking or being a completist) and find enough publicity through press reviews to catch the readers’ interest for an old book.
You’re a publisher’s dream with your blog and enthusiasm for these older books.
Having exclusivity must be a priority too.
Not really here because they were talking about OOP crime fiction books. And I guess they have the exclusivity through the rights of the translation they publish.