“I can always tell if a broad is lying to me. I spent a lot of years honing this bullshit detector.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (OCT 9, 2011)

In the 1960s, Mickey Spillane began to write The Consummata–a follow-up to The Delta Factor, the novel which introduced super-crook Morgan the Raider. After a series of disappointments with the Delta Factor film, Spillane stopped work on the unfinished The Consummata manuscript. Twenty years ago, he gave the manuscript to long-term friend, collaborator, and creative heir, Max Allan Collins. Since the death of Spillane in 2006, Collins has devoted himself to finishing the many Spillane projects left behind. So far fans have seen a number of publications, including Dead Street, The Goliath Bone, The Big Bang, and Kiss Her Goodbye. Now comes The Consummata–the long awaited sequel to The Delta Factor. The appearance of the sequel is reason enough to celebrate, but the novel’s publication also heralds the autumn return of Hard Case Crime following a short hiatus.

The Consummata finds Morgan the Raider on the run in Miami’s Little Havana and being chased by “federal suits” teamed with “local fuzz” who think he has 40 million dollars in stolen funds. With no place to hide, the chase seems to be coming to its inevitable conclusion, but suddenly Morgan finds himself snatched and hidden from the feds by some of Little Havana’s Cuban community. As Morgan hangs out with the Cubans waiting for the heat to cool down, he learns that the exiles managed to scrape together a fund of $75,000 to assist their relatives back in Cuba. Double agent Jaimie Halaquez wormed his way into the Little Havana exile community, and once he gained their trust, he lifted the dough. Morgan, grateful for the Cubans’ help, agrees to track down Halaquez and get the money back.

Easier said than done….

Halaquez, as it turns out, is “an S&M freak,” and this leads Morgan on the hunt for La Consummata, a legendary dominatrix who is rumored to be “setting up shop in Miami:”

“Sometimes she works alone, by appointment through intermediaries. Other times she has set up a location with other young women trained in the arts of sado-masochism. And, again, clients are by referral only. She has turned up in every major city in America and not a few in Europe. Her clients, they say, are among the most rich and powerful men in business and government. If she exists.”

“You don’t even know if she exists?”

“She is a rumor. A wisp of smoke. A legend. A dream. Lovely, a vision in black leather, they say….”

Of course, it’s inevitable that La Consummata and Morgan meet and tangle.

The Consummata is unabashedly pulp, so this is fast-paced action with not a lot of down-time. The story is set in the 60s, so expect the women to be sexy babes and the men (Morgan specifically) to be macho. This is a sequel novel, and for those who didn’t read The Delta Factor, The Consummata plays catch-up for approximately one chapter. Naturally, since the action hits the notorious bordellos of Miami and includes some of its working women, the book includes sex which is told from a male fantasy perspective. Overall, however, the emphasis is on action, reaction, and the recovery of stolen money.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 2 readers
PUBLISHER:	Hard Case Crime (October 4, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Mickey Spillaine and Max Allan Collins
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Quarry’s Ex by Max Allan Collins Something’s Down There by Mickey Spillaine And by both authors together: Dead Street

Bibliography:

Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins:

• Dead Street (2007)
• The Goliath Bone (2008)
• The Big Bang ( 2010)
• Kiss Her Goodbye (May 2011)
• The Consummata (October 2011)

“It was awful, Fatima, like he was possessed or something. See, he has these delusions, on top of the temper. He thinks we’re gonna get millions of dollars from the government, and that everyone’s trying to keep him from collecting the money. And I’m all alborotada all the time fearing that he’s going to get arrested and lose his green card and we’ll all end up in some sad life in Colombia with no way back!”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (MAY 21, 2010)

As Try to Remember begins in 1968, Gabriella is fifteen years old, living with her father, mother and two younger brothers near Miami, Florida. They have come to the United States from Colombia and though her parents both hold green cards, Gabi is afraid that they will all have their cards confiscated and be sent back to their village in Colombia. Gabi’s fears stem mostly from the fact that her father behaves erratically and her brothers get into trouble in school.

They have a large extended family that helps them out. Gabi’s mother does piecework and part-time janitorial work. Gabi’s father harbors delusions that the government owes him millions of dollars. He is unable to hold down a job and he spends his days writing letters to government officials asking for his back pay. Somehow, he has confused the money he earned as an oil rig worker in Colombia with money he thinks he’s earned in the U.S. Gabi is the transcriber of these letters which are incomprehensible and delusional in quality.

It is obvious to Gabi that her father is very ill. The family, however, and especially Gabi’s mother, refuse to believe the extent of his illness. They refer to what is going on with him as “nerves.” Sometimes Gabi’s father rants and beats up Gabi’s brothers. They, in turn, are acting out by glue sniffing, oppositional behaviors and cutting school. Gabi appears to be the only mature one in the family. She tries to break through her mother’s denial about her father, but can not succeed.

After Gabi’s father severely beats up one of her brothers, her mother gets some dalmane (a sleeping pill) from a relative and starts grinding these pills into her husband’s morning orange juice. It seems to calm him down.

Gabi is coming of age in all this chaos. She is trying to individuate, make friends, understand the rituals of dating and daring to think what she might do with her life. It is the 1960’s, a time of experimentation, the beginning of feminism and the time when she is growing up. Her family expects her to finish high school and live at home afterwords. Should she have aspirations of attending college, she must commute.

Gabi meets people who hold different ideas than her family and they open her eyes to alternative possibilities. She thinks about leaving home for college, wishes that she had more time to spend outside the house and, mostly, wishes that her family was not so crazy.

I enjoyed reading about Gabi and her life. I empathized with her difficult life as a parental child and the only mature person in her family. However, I was somewhat disappointed with the way this book dealt with the serious and chronic mental illness of Gabi’s father. Dealing with serious and chronic mental illness is always difficult for families. At best, there are resources, support systems and medical assistance. Gabi’s family is poor, her mother in denial and they don’t know where to start. Additionally, there are cross-cultural differences to mental illness. In Latino families, a man’s role is very important. To undermine his role, by suggesting there is something wrong with him, is a very difficult action to take. It felt like Gabi’s mother’s denial was too strong, her resistance beyond reasonable. However, the book was more about Gabi’s experience of her family than what her family actually did or did not do.

This is a debut novel by a recognized poet who currently works as an immigration attorney. The author was born in Cartagena, Colombia and grew up in Miami, Florida. The addendum to the book states that this novel “draws on her personal experiences growing up as a Latina in Miami.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 15 readers
PUBLISHER:	Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (May 5, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Iris Gomez
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another coming of age story: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by  Junot Diaz

Bibliography:

• Try to Remember (May 2010)

Poetry:

• Housicwhissick Blue: Poetry of the Blue Hills Reservation (1993)
• When Comets Rained (2005)