This is Spillane’s final novel. He died a year before its publication. His friend, Hard Case Crime’s Max Allan Collins, prepared the manuscript for publication and completed the last three chapters himself using Spillane’s outline.

 

For 20 years, former NYPD cop Jack ‘Shooter’ Stang has lived with the memory of his girlfriend’s death during an attempted abduction by the mob. But what if the love of his life is alive? What if she somehow secretly survived—but lost her sight, and her memory, and everything else she had... except her enemies?

 

Now Jack has a second chance to save the only woman he ever loved—or to lose her for good... and what does she have to do with stolen nuclear material?

 

The style is recognisably Micky Spillane but this pulp novel with its gangsters has a contemporary setting, post 9/11, with modern themes of computer viruses and Al-Qaeda threats given the full Spillane treatment. A physically changing Manhattan and the 'retirement state' of Florida provide the locations. The themes of death and second chances are visited here making it a particularly moving read given that it’s the author's final novel.

 

It’s also a love story, the past being revisited, a time when Bettie and Stang lived together, a time when he was a top detective and she knew who he was. And a present era with Bette in a retirement home, full of retired cops like Stang. He’s back with her once more but he’s not the only one wanting her…

 

The qualities associated with Spillane, the fast pace, the violence, the tough - at times shocking - justice, are to be found here.