The year 2018 marks Mickey Spillane’s 100th birthday, and it is fans of hard-boiled crime fiction who get the gifts. The respected and revered Hard Case Crime imprint has fittingly planned the publication of a number of Spillane-connected works, the first of these being a volume fittingly titled THE LAST STAND. I am delighted to report that it contains not one but two of Spillane’s previously unpublished novels that effectively bookend his writing career.

The first of these is A BULLET FOR SATISFACTION, which required some supplemental editing and writing by Max Allan Collins, a prolific author in his own right and Spillane’s anointed postmortem collaborator. This is actually a novella, but Spillane --- with Collins working in his wake --- made every word count. Written very early in his career, the tale is vintage Spillane and identifiable as such practically from the first paragraph. Rod Dexter is a homicide detective who crosses swords with Frank Graham, the local district attorney, during the course of a murder investigation. The victim, a friend of Graham’s, is a state politician who was shot to death. There are few clues and no witnesses. Dexter confronts Graham and is summarily fired.

"Anyone who enjoys genre fiction can find much to love here, especially those who were born long after Spillane and Mike Hammer had their popular run. Actually, though, that run never really stopped, did it?"

That, of course, doesn’t stop Dexter from continuing to investigate the murder and looking for revenge on Graham. I’m not really giving anything away when I tell you that he accomplishes both, but not before getting involved with a couple of lovely women, living through a gun battle or two, and almost getting beaten to death. If you’ve read any of Spillane’s early works, you’ll be familiar with the formula, but it’s one that is always interesting and never tiresome, in part because Spillane (with an assist from Collins) provides a mystery at the core of the story, a puzzle for which the solution is not revealed until the very end. It’s classic Spillane, presented for the first time.

That brings us to THE LAST STAND, which, as we are informed by Collins in his introduction, is Spillane’s last completed work and is a contemporary western. Spillane, well into his 80s at the time of writing it, was not afraid to depart from his tried-and-true method. Indeed, the novel begins slowly, with the pilot of a private aircraft making an emergency landing on an Indian reservation. The pilot’s name is Joe Gillian, and his sudden return to earth is witnessed by Sequoia Pete. The two engage in some male bonding, leading to a bromance of sorts as they traverse the desert, during which Joe happens to uncover an arrowhead made of a miraculous substance that ultimately comes to the attention of the federal government. Some gangsters searching for rare artifacts are also involved. Pete happens to have a sister named Running Fox --- seriously --- and, of course, romantic sparks fly between her and Joe.

Again, this story takes a while to get going, but once it does, it is a near-perfect example of something that could have been written for a 1940s pulp magazine but reads just fine in 2018. It’s not the Spillane you know, but it’s still a terrific story.

These two novels are not just for Spillane completists. Anyone who enjoys genre fiction can find much to love here, especially those who were born long after Spillane and Mike Hammer had their popular run. Actually, though, that run never really stopped, did it?