

The last of Spillane's 13 books was published in 1996, when the author was near 80 and the popularity of his fast-paced, sex- and violence-filled series had waned. Black Alley finds Hammer awakening from a coma. All he really wants to do is avenge the death of an old army pal and marry his girl Friday with the "million-dollar legs," Velda Sterling. But he discovers he's mixed up in a search for billions in missing mob money. After Spillane's death, writer Max Allan Collins is continuing the series. He challenges Hammer with a kidnapping case involving a priceless archaeological find and Islamic terrorists and Israeli extremists in The Goliath Bone. Six books later, it's the mid-1950s in Collins's Kill Me, Darling (Titan, March 24). Velda has abandoned Hammer with a one-word note. Hammer responds with a four-month bender. His best friend, NYPD captain Pat Chambers, tells him Velda has been seen running around Miami on the arm of a notorious gangster. Of course, Hammer pulls himself together and hits the road for Florida to rescue his girl. I'm excited about this book because early reviewers say it's superb. It's based on an early unfinished Spillane manuscript and reportedly you can't tell where Spillane's writing ends and where Collins's begins. Publishers Weekly reports, "He even matches Spillane's colorful turns of phrase (e.g., 'My bullet shattered his smile on its way through him and out of the back of his head.')." This looks like a sure bet for Mike Hammer fans.

The trilogy's second installment, to be published by Morrow on April 21, is another 800 pager. The Bone Tree takes up where Natchez Burning ends. Iles delves into the 1960s history of his hometown of Natchez, linking real and imagined local and world events to his Cage family saga. The first two books have received excellent Goodreads reviews. The final one, Unwritten Laws, is due next spring.

After Me's father, a psychologist, was murdered by the police, embarrassed people refuse to admit the town exists and it is literally taken off the map. Me and the town's best-known citizen, former Little Rascals star Hominy Jenkins, begin a campaign to make the town incapable of being ignored. Farm land is turned over to marijuana. Me enslaves Jenkins (at Jenkins' request). Dickens adopts "the Lost City of White Male Privilege" as a sister town and re-segregates its local schools so only minority students can attend.
That's the plot, but as the Boston Globe puts it, it's only "gloriously skeletal, sometimes misplaced and forgotten, and often there so that Beatty (and his narrator) have an excuse to riff on the things that matter most to them: race, politics, music, television, Los Angeles." The buzz about this novel, Beatty's fourth, calls it a comic masterpiece.

Neal Stephenson blends history of science, sociology, math, cryptography, and technology into twisting and turning, dark-humored post-cyberpunk fiction. His books feature large casts of characters and elaborate multiple plot lines. If writers Tom Robbins, Philip K. Dick and William Gibson merged, Stephenson might be the result. Some of his best-known novels include Reamde (see here), Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash and the multi-volume Baroque Cycle (see here). It's a body of thought-provoking books and I strongly recommend reading them.

Since collaborating on The Rule of Four with Ian Caldwell, his best friend since childhood, Dustin Thomason wrote the thriller 12.21, based on the doomsday prediction of the ancient Mayan calendar. With The Fifth Gospel, Caldwell creates a thriller featuring a married Greek Catholic priest, Alex Andreou, and his brother, Simon Andreou, a Roman Catholic priest and diplomat. It's set within and around the Vatican and involves a controversial museum exhibit about the Shroud of Turin. Publishers Weekly describes it as "another superior religious thriller, notable for its existential and spiritual profundity.... An intelligent and deeply contemplative writing style, along with more than a few bombshell plot twists, set this one above the pack, but it’s the insightful character development that makes this redemptive story so moving."
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