Thu 28 Aug 2008
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS review: MICKEY SPILLANE – Day of the Guns.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Authors , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
by Max Allan Collins and James L. Traylor:
MICKEY SPILLANE – Day of the Guns.
E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1964. Signet D2643, paperback, April 1965. [Several later printings.]
Properly overshadowed by Mike Hammer, espionage agent Tiger Mann is the hero of Mickey Spillane’s only other series of mystery novels. Mann remains a pale shadow of the mighty Mike, a Bond-era reworking of the Hammer formula; but the first of the series has considered merit.
Tiger Mann is employed by an espionage organization funded by ultraright-wing billionaire Martin Grady, of self-professed altruistic, patriotic purposes. Chatting with a Broadway columnist in a nightclub, Tiger spots a beautiful woman who strikingly resembles a Nazi spy named Rondine who attempted to kill him years before.
Though he loved Rondine, Tiger has sworn to kill her should he encounter her again. The woman, Edith Caine, professes not to be Rondine, but Tiger refuses to believe her and sets out to learn what she is up to. Soon he is battling a Communist conspiracy, and in a striptease finale that purposely evokes and invokes the classic conclusion of I, the Jury, Tiger must face the naked truth about Rondine.
Day of the Guns is a fast-moving and fine example of Spillane’s mature craftsmanship; he has great fun doing twists on himself, as the conclusion of the novel shows. But this book – and, particularly, later Tiger Mann entries – lacks the conviction of the Hammer novels.
Tiger Mann is Mike Hammer in secret-agent drag: His style and world are Hammer’s; despite mentions of faraway places, the action is confined to New York. But while Hammer is an antiorganization man, Tiger, for all his lone-wolf posturing, is a company man. This goes against the Spillane grain.
The three other Tiger Mann novels are Bloody Sunrise (1965), The Death Dealers (1965), and The By-Pass Control (1966). Each declines in quality.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Steve: You have me hooked on these Spillane reviews from 1001 Midnights. I always thought that if there were no Mike Hammer novels, the Tiger Mann series would have been a bigger hit for Mickey. But unfortunately we must compare the two and how can Mann compete with Hammer — It’s just not fair… I still enjoyed the Tiger Mann character and series, but I like everything Spillane wrote.
An awesome title for a book, “Day of the Guns” might be my favorite Spillane title from any of his novels.
August West…
August 28th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
August
Confession time. I’ve never read a Tiger Mann book, but I’m with you — this review has convinced me I really ought to, and why not this one?
As for 1001 Midnights, this is the last of the the three Spillane reviews that are in it. The good news is that there are 998 reviews by other authors left to go.
— Steve
January 23rd, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I love Spillane so I hate to say I could never embrace Tiger Mann. I guess my first problem is I never could accept a secret agent who never gets any farther from New York than New Jersey and thinks exotic is eating at a Middle-Eastern restaurant (does this make me a world traveler when I eat Indian food or a gyro?).
Then too, while Mike is certainly driven, Tiger seems downright disturbed. I can understand seeing the twin of the woman who shot you in the belly could be upsetting, but I’m afraid Mickey overestimated the wonders of plastic surgery in 1964 when he wants us to buy that a woman could pass for twenty years younger in good light and naked, but Tiger is still hanging onto the suspicion in the second book.
And then there is the scene when the KGB try to machine gun Tiger ala Al Capone from a racing car. I half expected him to leap on the running boards. And while I tried to park any politics aside, it didn’t help that Tiger behaves more like G. Gordon Liddy torching the Constitution than Mike Hammer’s lone avenger. Am I the only one who found Tiger’s wealthy boss more likely to be a villain in anyone else’s books than the hero’s employer?
Worst of all Spillane didn’t believe in Tiger Mann, and it shows. The one key quality of Spillane’s fiction is his own belief in what he writes, and in the Mann books that isn’t there. I really think it is a diservice to Spillane to reccommend these books, unless you add the caveat that first you should read everything else he wrote and then read these only when you were desperate for more Spillane. Read that way I can give them a pass as minor pastische of the Hammer books, but on their own, without my affection for Spillane and Hammer, and my love of his work, these really don’t hold up.
And come on, what kind of secret agent meets a newspaper columnist for lunch in a public place and talks about being a spy? I swear, Tiger seems to introcduce himself as “Hi, I’m Tiger Mann, secret agent,” to half the people he meets. I just don’t think Spillane believed any of this for a moment. The only thing that saves them is the was incapable of writing anything dull, boring, or not worth reading — but Tiger Mann comes close.