Kiss Her Goodbye: An Otto Penzler Book (Mike Hammer)

“Entertaining . . . proof of how well Max Allan Collins has managed to mimic Spillane’s style.” — The Onion, A. V. Club

Mike Hammer has been away from New York too long when he learns that an old mentor on the New York police force has committed suicide. Suspicious, Hammer returns for the funeral. When a woman is murdered practically on the funeral home’s doorstep, he gets drawn into the hunt for Nazi diamonds, a mysterious beauty who was close to Doolan in his final days, and a gang of drug racketeers. Soon Hammer is hobnobbing with coke-snorting celebrities at a notorious disco. Everything leads to a Mafia social club where Hammer and his .45 come calling, sparking the wildest showdown since Spillane’s classic One Lonely Night.

“[Spillane’s and Collins’s] risks pay off on the page, resulting in some of the finest novels of their respective careers . . . Kiss Her Goodbye is a throwback in the best sense of the word: it reminds us why Spillane was so good in the first place; and Collins, too . . . This is action-mystery par excellence.” — Los Angeles Review of Books