Happy Birthday To Mickey Spillane

  

Happy birthday to the late crime writer Mickey Spillane.

 

Acccording to Biography.com:

 

Mickey Spillane was born on March 9, 1918 in Brooklyn. He was a writer of pulp detective fiction whose first novel, I, The Jury, introduced the character Mike Hammer. Hammer appeared in a series of mystery novels and film adaptations (most notably Kiss Me, Deadly). Spillane claimed to write solely for money and his books--highly sexualized and sadistic--were huge popular hits. He died in 2006.     

 

I read Spillane's books when I was a  pre-teen and I liked the tough guy stuff and the girls. I later re-read a couple of the books and although I still found them to be entertaining, I realized that he was certainly not in the same league as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

 

But I like that he didn't care. I like his "f**k you" attitude. I like that he was an unabashed conservative.

 

 

 The web site Thrillingdetective.com offers a look back at Mickey Spillane

 

Spillane became, easily, the best selling private eye writer of his time and Hammer became a multi-media juggernaut, appearing on radio and in films, a daily newspaper comic strip and not one but two popular television series, as well as, of course, thirteen best-selling novels, stretching from I, the Jury in 1947 and wrapping up with Black Alley in 1996.

Spillane became something of a media star himself himself, playing the part of Hammer in the 1963 film version of The Girl Hunters and appearing as a spokesman for Miller Lite beer TV ad for almost two decades.

 

... He was also something of a rarity in publishing -- he was unapologetically conservative, an "unconditional believer in good and evil" who seemed to delight in rattling cages in his fiction, slamming Communists and liberals and anyone else he took exception to.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/spillane.html