They Never Come Back

THE DEEP (218 pp.)--Mickey Spillane--Dutton ($2.95).

It is a hard tough mean mucky real bad thing to see an old champ go soft. Like the Sugarman rubber-kneed against Fender. Like Papa not making it to those trees in time. Like Mickey Spillane coming back with his first book in eight years: "I let him get close enough to kiss me off with his eyes, took the blade out of his fingers so fast he never knew I had it until I raked him hard over the ribs where the blood could make a mess for everybody to see. When I hit him his teeth powdered and he fell against Benny-from-Brooklyn and lay there sucking air."

Obviously this is not the Mucky Spleen (Pogo's phrase for him) of old. The hero --not Mike Hammer but a creep named "Deep" for short and "Old Deep the Cannon Boy" for long--is splattering a man. Hammer seldom bothered with anything so tame; he ka-powed naked blondes in the stomach with his blue-glinting .45. Such parlor pleasantries accounted for the sale of 32 million paperback copies of Spillane's seven previous titles. The new boy, a hardrock who shows up to take over his neighborhood gang after 25 years of mysterious absence, will never do as well. Deep down, Deep is mushy. He sticks to one crazy beautiful 6-ft.-tall dame, and all he does is slap her once across, watching "the red seep back into her face." Could any fan show his face at the De Sade A.C. carrying a book this mild?

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