Hammer attends is the real life Foley Square trial, where members of the Communist Party USA were convicted of infringing the Smith Act. Deamer may be a heavily fictionalised version of Henry A. Wallace. But his strong anti-communist stance, as opposed to the conciliatory approach Wallace championed, suggests that Joseph McCarthy may have been a model. Critical response Critics referred to the book as being "angrily anti-communist" and "extremely anti-communist." More recently, some have pointed out that what makes the novel different from other anti-communist literature of the time are both that the communists are portrayed as being "essentially stupid" while also being "extremely threatening," and the theme of the communists overestimating themselves is constant. The novel makes the case, without explicitly saying so, that "the Soviets were stupid and weak, and the seductive power of Communism could easily be exposed as fraudulent." Other more recent reviews point out that the novel is ahead of its time in that it is genuinely anti-racist long before this was fashionable. References 1951 American novels E. P. Dutton books Novels by Mickey Spillane Cold War spy novels Mike Hammer (character) novels