Description:
From Mickey Spillane, the hardest-boiled of detective writers, comes ... a sea story? Surprising but true, and a fun yarn it is. Mako Hooker is enjoying retirement from a life of lethal undercover work, fishing the days away on the remote Caribbean island of Peolle. But his idyll is shattered by the "eater"--an unknown presence in the deep water that bites the bottoms out of boats. As the attacks intensify, the outside world converges on Peolle: the media, a Hollywood film company, and some of Hooker's old colleagues from the Company, one of whom once put a bullet in him. As the intrigue thickens and the action gets nasty, Hooker reluctantly reactivates his old "kill or be killed" skills while trying to solve the riddle of the eater and kindling a romance with a beautiful heiress from a neighboring island. Spillane published his first Mike Hammer novel in 1947, and though his pace has slowed, he has continued to publish into his 80s. Here, his touch here falters at times, with phrasing or pacing that seem off kilter. But the prose is often vigorous, the characters are well-drawn, the settings are vividly evoked, and the plot contains more angles than a geometry test--capped by an ingenious solution to the central mystery. Something's Down There is a pleasing concoction from a storied writer. --Nicholas H. Allison
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