What do you think?
Rate this book
Mac #8
How Hard to Kill
A brutal murder exposes a web of vice and extortion.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
8 people want to read
About the author
Thomas B. Dewey
85 books8 followersThomas Blanchard Dewey was an American author of hardboiled crime novels. He created two series of novels: the first one features Mac, a private investigator from Chicago, the second features Pete Schofield.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 17, 2025
This was a good read, definitely a Mac novel but inexorably becoming a product of the 1960s. The vibe is different than the 1940s or even the 50s. We see the early edges of what would become the Mod movement and hippie culture. For example, Dickie Bird and Ziggy are not names that would’ve appeared in a detective novel even five years earlier. And the slasher-inspired cover of the paperback edition is another product of the early 60s—this time showing a Psycho influence.
In this one, a rich louse who had married a former beau of Mac’s is stabbed in the heart… and also had his jugular severed. It was done with Mac’s misplaced pocketknife toward the end of a party at Dickie Bird’s mansion. And although they didn’t see him, two people say they had heard someone vocally identify himself as Mac—once during a fight in the room before the deed and once outside in the garden after the fight. One is his former beau, Cathy, and the other is her precocious daughter. Neither of them tell the cops that information, but his frenemy Lieutenant Donovan has suspicions. Still, Donovan lets Mac go and poke around through the doings of a very messed-up extended family. Mac wrestles with secrets, a hulking but feeble-minded chauffeur/butler, and his lingering feelings for the suddenly widowed Cathy.
About that screwed-up family: there’s quite a large cast in this book; the listing of characters on the inside pages was very helpful, and I had to refer to it often.
One other note: the back cover copy makes this one seem far more salacious than it is… which is interesting because the previous one I read, You’ve Got Him Cold, gave little indication of such content but it was fairly pervasive.
At any rate, Dewey is becoming one of my favorite authors. Certainly there’s a Chandler influence, but Mac is his own thing. He is hard-boiled yet a thoroughly decent guy, easy to root for, during an era of detectives that were mostly leering, parodical scumbags.
I had decided on rating this 4 stars, but the last couple of paragraphs made me raise it to 5 with further evidence of Mac’s decency.
In this one, a rich louse who had married a former beau of Mac’s is stabbed in the heart… and also had his jugular severed. It was done with Mac’s misplaced pocketknife toward the end of a party at Dickie Bird’s mansion. And although they didn’t see him, two people say they had heard someone vocally identify himself as Mac—once during a fight in the room before the deed and once outside in the garden after the fight. One is his former beau, Cathy, and the other is her precocious daughter. Neither of them tell the cops that information, but his frenemy Lieutenant Donovan has suspicions. Still, Donovan lets Mac go and poke around through the doings of a very messed-up extended family. Mac wrestles with secrets, a hulking but feeble-minded chauffeur/butler, and his lingering feelings for the suddenly widowed Cathy.
About that screwed-up family: there’s quite a large cast in this book; the listing of characters on the inside pages was very helpful, and I had to refer to it often.
One other note: the back cover copy makes this one seem far more salacious than it is… which is interesting because the previous one I read, You’ve Got Him Cold, gave little indication of such content but it was fairly pervasive.
At any rate, Dewey is becoming one of my favorite authors. Certainly there’s a Chandler influence, but Mac is his own thing. He is hard-boiled yet a thoroughly decent guy, easy to root for, during an era of detectives that were mostly leering, parodical scumbags.
I had decided on rating this 4 stars, but the last couple of paragraphs made me raise it to 5 with further evidence of Mac’s decency.
Displaying 1 of 1 review