The Last Cop Out by Mickey Spillane

The two hoods on the floor in the outer office had messed up the rug with their own blood and vomit and were making forced mewing noises as the pain tingled their minds back to consciousness.  The brunette stood over the one with the broken arm, her lower lip clenched between he teeth, trying to keep from retching.

Back in late June of 2022 I bought a stack of Mickey Spillane paperbacks at clearance prices at Wonder Book in Frederick, MD.  Let's read one of them, The Last Cop Out, which debuted in hardcover in 1973 when I was less than two years old.

My paperback edition of The Last Cop Out is 190 pages of pretty small type (the hardcover, which you can read at the internet archive, is 300 pages), but all the scenes are short, the narrative zipping back and forth among the many characters, so it doesn't feel ponderous.  There are a multitude of scenes of criminals being assassinated with firearms and explosives (many characters get killed just a few pages after we meet them) and a few scenes of criminals being attacked by surprise and severely injured or bound and tortured.  There are no heroic duels between evenly matched he-men or anything life that--everything is sordid and brutal.  We also get plenty of scenes of sad and fetishistic sex between murderous criminals and prostitutes--the women are in it for cash or because they like being abused, the men are just having sex so they can be "drained" of their lust and get their focus back on their criminal enterprises.  Spillane's novel is pretty vulgar and graphic; on the very first page a criminal realizes he is about to be killed "all because of a stupid blonde cunt in a cold water flat who knew how to assuage his sex problems and bring him to that white glow he thought had disappeared forever."  People in distress vomit and pee their pants.  Spillane gives all the many characters, even the ones who are only around for a page or two, little personalities and histories, and the little quirk that characterizes one guy is that one of his testicles is sore from a recent fight.

The Last Cop Out starts with a bunch of scenes of high-ranking members of "the syndicate" that apparently controls most of the organized crime around the world and has spies in every large institution being murdered with different types of pistols, and with descriptions of the meetings of the top-ranking gangsters in New York City as they try to figure out who is killing their colleagues and what their response will be; presumably these attacks are the prelude to an effort by a rival criminal organization to take over some of their territory or something like that.  Then we have scenes with the forces of law and order.  Our hero, Gill Burke, is a tough New York City cop who knows more about the syndicate than anybody and has also blasted many criminals.  He has been off the force for a few years because his propensity to shoot down malefactors caught the ire of liberal reporters and he was sacked after killing some black thugs on the subway (it is also suggested that the police department didn't back him up because the syndicate has people within the department and in the mayor's office.)  But the D.A. has Burke brought back onto the force as a sort of special operator because they need his expertise to figure out who is killing all the big wigs in the syndicate--the authorities fear a mob war is going to erupt and this will cause all kinds of collateral damage, so they hope to catch whoever is gunning down all these gangsters and prevent a total free-for-all.

The novel follows Burke's investigation, and, in parallel, the investigations of the syndicate's top people.  There's trouble shooter Frank Verdun, known as "The Frenchman," a homosexual who gets an erotic thrill out of killing people.  There's Mark Shelby, birthname Marcus Aurelius Fabius Shelvan, the quarter-Jewish college graduate who is handling the New York branch's operations.  And there's Shelby's direct superior, old-timer Papa Menes, the official head of the New York branch and the titular head of the entire organization--though still subject to the authority of "the Big Board" in Chicago--and an antisemite who loves killing Jews.  Papa Menes is hiding out in Florida until it all blows over, managing things via conference call.  These three don't really care for each other and each hopes the others stumble, and is not averse to providing his comrades in crime a little push.  

Burke and the cops he is working with, and Verdun and his underworld associates, collect clues by interviewing people, torturing people, going though old files, etc.  Burke starts up a relationship with the receptionist in The Frenchman's office at a syndicate-owned front business.  Helen Scanlon's father was a cop who died in the line of duty and was then framed for corruption; the syndicate gave her a job when her testimony provided an alibi for one of their thugs.  Scanlon provides Burke info on what is going on inside the syndicate, but could she also be spying on Burke for the mob, or perhaps be the unwitting bait for a trap?  All the while the killings continue, getting more and more spectacular.

At the novel's halfway point Burke and Scanlon consummate their relationship.  Thirty-year-old Scanlon lost her virginity to a rapist as a teenager, and then endured the trial of the casting couch during her short-lived show biz career, and with Burke she actually enjoys sex for the first time.  For his part, Burke has always experienced sex selfishly and mechanically--for the first time he cares about the other person he is having sex with.

Early in the second half of the novel, the mysterious killer or killers catches up to The Frenchman and the mob's top problem solver breathes his last.  The Big Board puts more responsibility on Shelby's plate and pressures Papa Menes to take a more direct hand in day to day business as the whole criminal enterprise begins to crumble from internal revolts.  Additional complications are introduced when both Shelby's and Papa Menes's favorite prostitutes turn on them.  Shelby and Papa Menes both execute plans to seize total control of the organization--one of Papa Menes's goons even exterminates the Big Board with a rocket launcher.  Spillane does a good job keeping us guessing when it comes to who will live, who will die, and who is responsible for whose demise.  

The Last Cop Out is a competent entertainment.  I was genuinely curious as to who was killing all the mobsters, surprised that The Frenchman got killed so early, and wanted to see who ended up on top of the mob (or if the entire syndicate just got blown up by the cops or by vigilantes.)  Every few pages something spectacularly sad or disgusting happens.  The novel has a strong narrative drive because every character has a strong motivation and acts in a way that pursues his or her goals, and we wonder if they will succeed or fail, and when they actually do succeed or (mostly) fail, it is because of their own personalities and decisions.  The book is nasty and dirty, but it isn't nihilistic; people seem to get what they deserve.

So, thumbs up for The Last Cop Out.  I probably don't need to tell you that, besides being gross, the book is homophobic and sexist, or that it suggests the solution to rampant crime is to loosen the legal constraints on the police and on vigilantes--The Last Cop Out is a solid piece of work, but it is not for everybody.