BOOK REVIEW: "The Consummata" by Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins Revives

The Mick's Morgan The Raider...

...In A Hard Case Of Crime

Every Spillane Fan CONSUMMATA Have!

A Happy Birthday Mickey Spillane
Keeper in Krime

by Don K. Barbecue

Now that I've reviewed Quarry's Ex and found it one killer thriller, I'll give you a few minutes to run on down to the nearest bookstore for it. Either that or employ the usage of some on-line ordering service. Only don't tell Unk, who sez, whatever that means, that “After that 'Space Abhors A UniVACuum' Deal,' all I gotta do is stink abutt computers and IBM!”

Not to worry. Unk already provided me with his caption to The Consummata, which is Max Allan Collins' second Hard Case Crime in a row, as to grace the loverly McGinnis cover with a word balloon. According to Unk, for reasons you'll soon learn, it has to be said by an old partner in crime of the cover gal, some con, and it goes like this:

Con: “What's Summata you, lady, you keep playing with that gun down there, something's gonna GO OFF – and there'll be a whole Miss of blood Spillane around!”

In fact, Unk gave that line to me shortly after he saved my “sorry butt” from that little episode during the Temple of Schlock review for a new HCC in slay too long, Lawrence Block's Getting Off, wherein I was almost gotten off myself. Yeah, it really looked like the Charles Chips were down.

For those who missed it, come with me now to what was transpiring right at the end of that Getting Off review:

When, just as I was wrappping up, here comes this Charles Chips delivery truck from which people are firing guns at me. What thuh? Right in the middle of the street, from the surface of the street Unk's head pops up directly in the path of said vehicle, like 30 feet away from it. I don't believe it! And wuzzat on his friggin' head? Looks like a round piece of black cement grille or something, with a chinstrap! Not that I got much time to think about it, even as Unk let loose a few rounds of his own while shouting “Look out, kid, no matter whatcha think these guys ain't using Blanc's, the Mel. Get down already, I gotcha manhole covered!”

It doesn't last long. Truck car-roams to its side, and anyone scrambling out alive gets unalive fast and Fury-ous. I say that cuz, while Unk never said he worked for S.H.I.E.L.D., even to be comic, he still has one helluva A.I.M.

Truck's barely settled when Unk reachs up with his free hand and pushes a PIECES NOW! button on his helmet. Pavement around the truck disappears beneath it, taking dead assailants down with it, their guns still smoking.

Unk swivels, faces me square, shouts back to me “Hah, just cuz they use an old Charles Chip truck don't mean they're taking ME out with no snack attack!”

Last thing he hollers is something about “lost votes and rigged ballots down in Flori-DUH!,” and oh yeah, a cry of “You'll never successfully Bushwhack me and mine, suckers!”

I Coletown askt Unk onced about "Who WERE those guys, anyway?" and he just put his tattered old John D. Mac paperback down next to an old Lady from L.U.S.T. adventure that looked more like tittered.

Whereopon the man reached for that super-sub-atomic-whippy-poot-raygun thing he calls his "Walther PPKDick," got up with it like a shot and was outta the joint in no time.

Heedless to slay, Unk was gone so fast the place shook, and that John D. pback hit the floor so wide open flush it plumb broke and busted. Unk bitched about it later, but I told him that's what ya get when ya slam the big door ...

Yeah, suddenly I was the last one left.

Man, Unk had gone awful fast. But not fast enough that I didn't hear him off in the deepening distance, yelling something about how he was gonna "maul and MANGLE Chad," whoever that was, "down in" somewhere rhymes with "Gory Ma." Least that's what it sounded like to Miami.

Okay, reason I brought this up. The Temple's been swamped with people ... two of them, both old vamps of Unk's and Counting ... wanting to know what happened at the end of the Getting Off review, whether I GOT off'ed. Now they gnaw.

So, betcha that particular aside gotcha wondering about Unk's politics. Which brings us to Frank Morrison Spillane's politics via his own characters. Take Mike Hammer. In one of the later all-Spillane Hammer adventures, The Body Lovers, Hammer gets aslay with blowing up any number of movers and shakers and higher up schmucks. Leaves them all the politicold, cold ground.

Then there was Tiger Mann, Spillane's distaff answer to James Bond. And the answer was “What's the matter grue?”

Over the course of four 60's novels, bing bang boom!, Spillane Hammered out those Tiger tails at a superMannly pace. Mann was Mike Hammer with quasi-government sanction, and he liked his Cold War enemies a lot better dead than Red.

That said, those books are among Spillane's scary best. And whether, you decide, his enemies were actual Reds or not, when Mann took aim, like Unk, he never, ever Communist.

Of course, slay & hack when, we never doubted which were the good guys, and which the Cubad.

1967 ... about the time Unk sez I was “Ne-Hi to a pain in the gunbutt, so duh!” ... Spillane published The Delta Factor, the first and only adventure of Morgan The Raider. Morgan was a cross between, geez, who knows, some Tiger of a Mann and Hammer plus a new guy all his own manner of robbin' hood.

DELTA FACTOR's always been one of my favorite loose Spillanes. The oily 70's movie of same, not so much, even though I saw it once at the old, long-gone Mu-Way Drive-In in Pummeled Dwarf. At lust it starred Yvette Mimieux, who, even Unk admits, I was in Eloi-ve witch when I was a kid. Ah, to have a TIME MACHINE, all would be Wells ... he said all cagey and H. G.-ly.

Now I haven't time here to list all the Spillane Hammers or otherwise that involved a missing shipment of .... something! ... that everyone and his evil twin were hot to find, the truck. The Consummata lick thighs hinges upon one great big truckload of money that went .... somewhere ... at Delta's end. Book opens with Morgan outta stir, and everyone wants that missing forty mill, from our government to that of a certain island nation south of Unk's Flori-DUH. Don't wanna name names, but it's probably close enough ya could, all moist, take a small boat and Castro there.

So, Morgan wants his money, the Coms still hate they missed it, and our own government, yeah, U.S., is quite, regards our rebellious Raider, Fed up with him. Then there's the displaced islanders in the U.S., who could use that money to help their cause of winning back their homeland. Unless some Red bear has already liberate it.

What, ya think I'd forget to men shun Morgan's old lady friend, who gave him a heave-ho like nobody's fuzz nest? And could that home-grown in the U.S. revolutioness want Morgan for more than himself, or for freeing her still captive to non-capitalism country? Hah, like isle ever tell!

So what do these molls and this all have to do with something or someone involved called The Consummata? Churns out she's this legendary dominatrix ... he said, trying knot to give things all a'flay.

And who knows, unless Morgan hurries and loins who The Consummata is quickly, the author of the very next Hard Case Crime novel might ... HOLD on! CHOKE! get there Faust!

There ya have it, fear reader, the running with guns low down on Max Allan Collins latest. And when ya finish these, don't forget to check out his first three Hammer wrap ups, The Goliath Bone, The Big Bang and the incredible in a good slay Kiss Her Goodbye. Should prepare ya quite well for the 2012 release of number 4, Lady, Go Die! Be great if that book features another Robert McGinnis cover like this one does. Like Unk always sez, “Hell, kid, ALL books consummata have 'em.”

And ya know what, I don't think he's “kid”-ding me a femme fatall!