James S. Avati’s cover art for Signet Books’ 1953 edition of Mickey Spillane’s My Gun Is Quick combines elements of mystery, eroticism, danger, and anonymity (note that Mike Hammer’s face is turned away from the viewer, while the background is little more than shades of red) that are nicely representative of paperback art of this genre and period.
I don’t know if this scene represents an event described in the novel, but, well, it’s effective.
Admittedly, unlike many of the books featured at this blog, I’ve not – just yet!- actually read this particular work. However, even having only lightly skimmed the novel’s pages in search of an excerpt representing Spillane’s literary style (see below), the qualities of his writing emerge almost immediately: Crispness of language; violence – both perpetrated and experienced by protagonist Mike Hammer; a sense of foreboding and mystery; a rapid-fire sense of action; steady continuity and focus, with no extraneous action or dialogue.
The man was a hell of a writer.
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You can view the full 1957 United Artists film version of “My Gun Is Quick” (directed by Victor Saville, with Robert Bray as Mike Hammer, and Whitney Blake as Nancy Williams), at the Internet Archive.
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(An excerpt from page 157 of this Signet paperback… Though the text is actually a single paragraph with only two sentence breaks, for the purpose of this post, I’ve arranged it such that most lines are single phrases, as separated by commas.)
From the river the low cry of dark shapes and winking lights that were ships
echoed and re-echoed through the canyons of the avenues.
Lola turned the radio on low, bringing in a selection of classical piano pieces,
and I sat there with my eyes closed, listening, thinking, picturing my redhead as a blackmailer.
In a near sleep I thought it was Red at the piano fingering the keys
while I watched approvingly, my mind filled with thoughts.
She read my mind and her face grew sad,
sadder than anything I had ever seen and she turned her eyes on me
and I could see clear through them into the goodness of her soul
and I knew she wasn’t a blackmailer and my first impression had been right;
she was a girl who had come face to face with fate and had lost,
but in losing hadn’t lost all,
for there was light of holiness in her face that time when I was her friend,
when I thought that a look like that belonged only in church
when you were praying or getting married or something,
a light that was there now for me to see
while she played a song that was there for me now to see
that told me I was her friend and she was mine,
a friendship that was more than that,
it was a trust and I believed it … knew it and wanted it,
for here was a devotion more than I expected or deserved and I wanted to be worthy of it,
but before I could tell her so Feeney Last’s face swirled up from the mist beside the keyboard,
smirking,
silently mouthing smutty remarks and leering threats
that took the holiness away from the scene and smashed it underfoot,
assailing her with words that replaced the hardness and terror
that had been forgiven before we met and I couldn’t do a thing about it
because my feet were powerless to move
and my hands were glued to my sides by some invisible force that Feeney controlled
and wouldn’t release until he had killed her
and was gone with his laugh ringing in the air and the smirk still on his face,
daring me to follow where I couldn’t answer him;
all I could do was stand there and look at my redhead’s lifeless body
until I focused on her hands
to see where he had scratched her when he took the ring off.
References
James S. Avati…
…at askArt
…at Wikipedia
…at invaluable – The World’s Premier Auctions and Galleries
Mickey Spillane…
…at Wikipedia
…talks Mike Hammer, his writing process, and wealth (1962), at CBC
…February 11, 2004, at Carolina People (Part I)
…February 11, 2004, at Carolina People (Part II)
RIP Mickey Spillane (Mickey Spillane on the Dick Cavett show), at consumerguide
My Gun Is Quick…
…at Wikipedia
…at IMDB