The Last Spin (1960) is a short story written by Evan Hunter. Evan Hunter is only one Salvatore Albert Lombino’s pen-names and he the most well know as Ed McBain. Salvatore is also know from writing the screenplay of the Hitchcock film The Birds.
In this story two rival gangs – or as the author uses the term ”clubs” – decide to solve a conflict by setting up one member from both clubs to play Russian roulette against each other. Rules are simple, one must die. At the start the chosen club members don’t know each other or haven’t even seen each other before. But as the game goes on they start talking and they become aware that they joined their respective gang because it was the gang on their street, not because they liked the other members. They also realize that they aren’t enemies, in fact more like friends. But the rule of the game still stands and in the end one dies.
The main characters, and the only characters in the story are Tigo and Danny. Tigo is a member from the ”Green and orange” club. He is the one who starts the conversation and the game. He is more open and talkative than Danny and also seems more experienced. Sitting at the table, opposite Tigo there is Danny. Danny is a member from ”Blue and gold” club. He is more reserved and also nervous about the situation but of course he cannot show his weakness to Tigo so he tries to act calm as possible. It’s really easy to identify with the characters. The story takes place in United States of America arguably somewhere around 1960’s referring to story’s publish date.
Over all the story is brilliantly written and it leaves reader begging for more. The language in the story isn’t very troublesome but some slang terms used in the story might throw you bit off. The Last Spin was truly exiting story and I would like to read more similar kinds of stories in the future.