Kiss Her Goodbye

A Mike Hammer Novel

By: Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins

Narrated by: Stacy Keach

Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Mike Hammer has been away from New York too long. Recuperating in Florida after the mob shoot-out that nearly claimed his life, he learns that an old mentor on the New York police force has committed suicide. Hammer returns for the funeral—and because he knows that Inspector Doolan would never have killed himself. But Manhattan in the seventies no longer feels like home. Hammer’s longtime partner, Velda, disappeared after he broke it off for her own safety, and his office is shut down.

When a woman is murdered practically on the funeral’s doorstep, Hammer is drawn into the hunt for a cache of Nazi diamonds that makes the Maltese Falcon seem like a knickknack and for the mysterious woman who had been close to Doolan in his final days. But drug racketeers, who had it in for Doolan, attract Hammer’s attention as well. Soon he is hobnobbing with coke-snorting celebrities at the notorious disco, Club 52, and playing footsie with a sleek lady DA., a modern woman on the make for old-fashioned Hammer. Everything leads to a Mafia social club where Hammer and his .45 come calling, initiating the wildest showdown since Spillane’s classic One Lonely Night.

Crack another case with Mike Hammer.

©2011 Mickey Spillane Publishing, LLC (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Mike Hammer is an icon of our culture.” (New York Times)

A Spillane Thriller

Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins deliver another fine Mike Hammer thriller, masterfully narrated by the brilliant Stacy Keach. Can't get enough of these books!

Great Fun, But Ultimately Disappointing

I enjoyed this audio book, except for the solution to the mystery. Collins gets lazy and uses the "Mrs. Fletcher Rule" making the ultimate villains painfully obvious quite early on. Anyone who watched "Murder, She Wrote" quickly learned to spot the murderer within the first ten minutes. It was always an innocuous peripheral character, usually friendly - as opposed to all the suspects with obvious motives - and a person you might find yourself asking "Why are they even in the story?" You didn't know why, but you knew who. That's the case here, and I was very disappointed when I was proven correct. Otherwise, the plotting itself is nicely convoluted, with many apparently disparate threads pulled together at the end. It is also extremely violent, to the point of parody at times. As for the (then) 69-year old Keach's performance, I go back and forth between "is he falling asleep?" and "his narration is so intimate it feels like he's reading to you right here in the room." Stephan Rudnicki, who does a great job with Matt Helm, feels overly energetic while portraying an aging Mike Hammer in other Collins audio books. Looking for a happy medium.

And enjoyable journey with Mike Hammer

An interesting path through a mishmash of characters that kept me guessing. It’s nice following along with Mike Hammer, who, somehow always stumbles into a connected murder to a connected criminal to a connected plot that only makes sense at the end of the story.

NY crime

First time author(s) for me. At the beginning of the book there is a short explanation. it states that shortly before he died Mickey Spillane told his wife that he wanted his friend, fellow author, and fan of his books, Max Allan Collins to finish the stories he'd been unable to finish. This book and several others are the result of that request.

I'd never read any of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels, at least I don't remember reading any, and having just read a couple LA crime novels, when I got this one I thought is was of the same LA genre. Turns out I was wrong, it is all about New York City, the underbelly of crime there with the mob at the forefront. Mike Hammer is the hardbroiled private investigator that works to solve many of these crimes. Hardbroiled is a term I read in several different places describing Hammer and after listening to the book I agree with the term.

In this book Hammer is living on the beach in Florida, enjoying life as much as he can, after being shot a year earlier in NYC working a crime and he dropped out to recover and recharge. One of his police contacts learns his whereabouts and contacts him to come home for the funeral of one of his good friends that has committed suicide. He goes back not believing his friend would off himself and immediately goes to work trying to prove it was a murder. Being a rookie myself in the Hammer series I'm guessing he works the situation as only Mike Hammer can.

I really enjoyed this book, the writing style, the characters, and Stacy Keach as a narrator was excellent. I want to further explore this series. I want to listen to some Spillane only written works and I believe I'd like to explore the works of the co-author Collins and check out his writing style.