"The Long Wait" is Spillane's 1951 hardboiled masterpiece. It is a dark, gloomy tale filled with hoods and femme fatales. It is the story of Johnny McBride returning to his hometown after many years away, returning to find every cop and every hood wants him gone or dead and the rest of the town isn't too keen on him hanging around either. It is hardboiled goodness reminiscent of Ross MacDonald's "Blue City" and Jonathan Latimer's 1941 classic "Solomon's Vineyard." Don't open this book if you've got things to do.

This is filled with familiar plot devices of this genre: the man returning to his hometown after years away to clear his good name, the crooked cops, the hoods running every bar, poolhall, casino around, the madam with the heart of gold, the barber who knows all the gossip, the nosy reporter. It is a story of one man standing alone against an entire town. It is a story about a man hellbent on revenge against three people.

Most of all, it is filled with hardboiled goodness. The narrator doesn't scare easily because: "Anything that could ever scare me had already done it and now there wasn't anything left I'd let push me." Now he punches a guy and his face turns into a squashed ripe tomato. And he only goes down when someone splits his skull open. And it's real hard for him to talk when a real bottle-yellow blonde in a green dress steps up to the microphone. "She was a million bucks in a green dress under artificial lights and two million in bed. A dime a dozen in the daytime though."

This is simply great stuff and Spillane doesn't get nearly enough credit for the quality of his writing, but, amidst the car chases and gunfire and facing off with hoods, a solid, hard-edged, dark tale is told.

Highly recommended. ( )

I think this is the first thriller-mystery by Mr. Spillane that wasn't a "Mike Hammer" yarn. I liked it. It is definitely a thriller-mystery and it kept me reading when I didn't really have time to do so. Mr. Spillane has great skill at moving a story along so that there is no time to be bored with it. ( )