VENGEANCE IS MINE !st Printing 1951 Signet 852

This is an excellent book for anyone who likes old time thrillers and wants to read a classic. It was written when nobody really wrote about cops or dangerous detective stories, so it is the pick of the litter for risky cop stories. It is about a Private Investigator, called Mike Hammer, who goes undercover with a group of blackmailing thieves. They set married men up with models, take compromising photos and then threaten to show the pictures to their wives if the men don't pay up. Mike Hammer ends up meeting one of the unlucky men, who had recognized the model he was set up with, only the man ends up dead the next morning. Since Mike Hammer is in the same room as him the D.A. wrongly charges the P.I. with murder. The charge can't stick because the killing was made to look like suicide but Mike gets mad at the D.A. and consequently loses his license. But this is one tough P.I. and he is not going to let it go at that. He ends up searching the streets for the killer and runs himself into a whole mess of trouble that turns out revealing many strange characters. This is also a good book for any one who likes the Film Noir genre, characterized by complex characters that don't make any sense in the beginning, especially for a young reader like myself. In the end everything came clear and because they were complex it made the story that much more thrilling and exciting. I would recommend this to anyone who likes fast paced and dark characters and a twisting tale filled with suspense.