I’ll say this right off the bat. This is probably one of my least favorite of his Hammer books. It begins with an old friend of Mike’s, Lippy Sullivan, dying in his own apartment from a knife wound. You can guess what Mike decides to do. He learns that his friend had been a pickpocket when he finds his stash of wallets and other items. He starts his investigation by questioning all the people whose items he returns. He ends up running into an old time hood named Woody Ballinger who’s fooled everyone but Mike into believing that he’s a legitimate businessman. Then there’s Heidi Anders, a beautiful actress with an addiction to more than the limelight. Somehow, we go from finding the killer of a pickpocket to a national plot to kill off the entire population of the United States, via a biological weapon. The Russians started the plot but even they don’t want it loose. So the hunt begins for the location of the weapon, with only two weeks in which to find it. Ok, maybe I was a bit tired when I read this, and even more tired when I reread it, but still, I’ve managed to be falling asleep and become wide awake reading a great book. Maybe Spillane himself was tired of writing about this character, which might explain the almost 20 year gap between this book and "The Killing Man". If you do decide to read this, don’t bother making it a priority.