Vengence is mine

I finally finished the last book of the Mike Hammer 3 pack I bought which is titled Vengeance is Mine.

This one was harder to finish for some reason.

The story starts out which Hammer having his PI ticket pulled because he is passed out in a hotel room after getting druck with an old friend who uses Mike's gun to kill himself, or so the DA thinks.
Mike is convinced that it is murder and sets out to prove it and et back his licence.

It turns out that Mike has been drinking quite a lot lately, trying to drown out the memories of the two women he loved who died in the first two books ( one of which he killed himself).
The killer reminds him of the love he killed and he is only able to kill this fantasically beautiful woman in the end when she turns out to be a transvesite.
I think that must have been pretty racy for the early 1950's when this book was first published.

It reminds me of a bar a worked in around 1980 where the patron who had the best legs in the entire bar was in fact a guy. I was clueless for a while until one of the other bartenders told me. Not that it changed anything. She was always straight with me (bad choice or words maybe) and since she was a regular I always served her the same.

I was just surprised.

I was always so busy at this place and there was always so much craziness going on that this was just another part of the circus.
This was one of the top dance clubs in NYC at the time and every night was something new.

One morning I was cleaning up the front room after we closed and I came upon an empty 3 foot long canister of nitrous oxide. I have no idea how they got it into the club but it was just another part of the surreal atmosphere that existed at the time.

Ah the good old days.

I was living at the time in room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel. I will relate stories about the hotel and about that room specifically at a later date.