THE ERECTION SET

A couple of skin games -- one featuring Dog Kelly's attempt to get his hands on his grandfather's failing company owned by his five cousins but about to be appropriated by one Cross McMillan -- and the other more literally entailing Dog's activities with McMillan's wife and a girl who is just as sexually prolific. The story's simple enough but then there's that atavistic gutspill ""slamming his face against the two-inch dirty ceramic (a toilet) and his teeth broke like dry matzos in a splatter of blood that speckled the stagnant water like obscene curds"" which would indicate, if you overlooked the title, that Spillane is at his very best worst.