Tomorrow I Die

Rating:
Summary: A Shorter Mickey
Review: Published in 1984, this volume collects 10 shorter works by the Mickster, introduced by Max Allan Collins. Do you need it? Definitely, if you are a Spillane fan and appreciator. Here's what you get: "Tomorrow I Die" is an exploration of the "unfolding identity" theme to be found in almost all Spillane's fiction. Robbers think the main character is the town's mayor, and take him hostage in making their escape. Townspeople recognize him as a washed-up actor who had just gotten off the Greyhound bus. Both groups are wrong, wrong, wrong! "The Girl Behind the Hedge" has one businessman get terrible revenge on his evil business rival... and the weapon is love of an unattainable object.

"Stand Up and Die!" has a cargo pilot dropping into a nest of inbred, xenophobic hillbillies, with all roads and routes of escape blocked. There are no identity switches here, just a nasty revelation about the motivations of the two leaders among the hillbillies. "The Pickpocket" is a two-pager in which a reformed pickpocket overcomes a major obstacle. "The Screen Test of Mike Hammer" is just what it appears to be, a short, original script which was filmed (starring Jack Stang as Hammer and Jonathan Winters(!) as a hobo) by Spillane in hopes of helping Stang to win the role of Hammer in the first proposed film, KISS ME DEADLY. It was Ralph Meeker who ultimately got the part. "Sex is my Vengeance" is a fictionalized version of what might have been a real interview with a high-priced call girl conducted by Spillane; it seems fairly realistic apart from the intrusion of some standard cliches about prostitution and prostitutes. "Trouble... Come and Get It!" is a real rarity, a comic book "text" by Spillane from 1941. This needs to be explained to anyone not familiar with Golden Age comics. In order to qualify for the low "magazine" mailing rates, comics of the 1940s and early 1950s had to have at least two pages that were pure "text," basically a short-short story. It was the thankless task of the regular comics scripters to write these texts, which none of the comic-reading youngsters would ever bother to read. This example from Spillane, while written for kids, shows clear traces of his later style.

"The Gold Fever Tapes" seems to be a later adventure of an earlier Spillane hero, Cat Fallon. There's enough material for a novel, and the lack of detailed development makes it appear as if Spillane is just trying to get the key concept (a really weird method of smuggling gold) off his chest. The most stereotypical Spillane work in the collection is the final novelet, "Everybody's Watching Me." Here a "punk kid" finds himself caught between three rival gang leaders and their gangs, and some corrupt cops. Everyone is afraid of a mystery man named Vetter, and I was hoping against hope from the first page that you-know-who would not implausibly turn out to be Vetter, but alas, Spillane didn't seem to want to spend much time twisting and re-twisting the ending of this one.

It's anyone's guess why Spillane stopped writing novels in 1953, turned to shorter fiction for magazines, and then jumped back to novels in the 1960s. The introduction by Collins speculates; you can make up your own mind after taking in these shorter works that date mainly from 1953 to 1958.