Title: The Consummata
Authors: Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
Publisher: Titan Books
Release Date: October 4, 2011
The Consummata is the sequel to 1967’s The Delta Factor. Spillane gave the unfinished manuscript to his friend, Max Allan Collins, hoping that they could do something with it later. Sadly, Spillane died in 2006. Collins finished this novel (and others on his own).
The book starts with Morgan the Raider on the run in Miami; along the way he explains why he is on the run, so the readers get a condensed version of what happened in The Delta Factor. Morgan is quickly pulled into helping Cuban refugees, as they helped hide him from the Feds. They had their money stolen and they know who did it, but they do not know where he is. Morgan agrees to help, for a small price.
He has old friends and new acquaintances helping him look for the thief. Along the way he runs into an old friend, who tried to kill him once or twice. She is now a madam for a brothel and Morgan stays there for most of the novel. He’s trying to dodge the Feds trying to catch him and stay alive as Cuban assassins try to kill him as he searches for the thief. While searching for the swindler, he hears rumors of the Consummata, a mysterious woman who has interesting sexual practices. The ending has a great twist and solves a lot of Morgan’s problems at once.
I have never read The Delta Factor, having been born in the ’80s and never reading this kind of fiction before. Even without this, I found the book quite enjoyable. The novel is well paced and once it gets going it doesn’t stop until the very end. I found the beginning of the novel a slow start, but that could be because I haven’t read the first book. However, it quickly picks up once Morgan starts looking for the thief and runs into the underside of Miami. In the novel, there are several instances of descriptive, but discrete, female nudity and sex. If you are uncomfortable with that, you might want to skip those scenes. If you like other Spillane or Collins novels, then you will want to pick up The Consummata.
