SPILLANE, Mickey - My Gun is Quick - (Hardcover in Wrapper)

Scarce vintage crime - This 1953 book still in great condition - Previous owner's name neatly inside - Wrapper had some loss - Internally mended - Now in removable protective sleeve. >>>  This story starts with Hammer, barely awake, stopping into a hash house for a couple of mugs of good black java to bring me around. The place is a dump with two bums and a drunk seated there and a fluff sitting off to one side at a table with red hair that didnt come out of a bottle. Hammer notices that she wasnt pretty at all, but she once had been. He explains that there are those things that happen under the skin and are reflected in the eyes and set of the mouth that take all the beauty out of a womans face. He beats up a hood who wanders in with a piece to bother her and then, with a soft spot in his heart, gives her some dough and asks her to get out of the life, open up the classifieds, get a job, and get her life straight. She doesnt live to see the next day and Hammer isnt satisfied when told it was a hit-and- run. Hammer has a soft spot for all the people who get ripped apart by life, who have their dreams torn to tiny little bits as each gray day goes on.    Though he doesnt learn her name till halfway through the book, Hammer tries to figure out what happened to Red as he takes to calling her and, on the way, steps into a web of corruption and blackmail and greed.