A Look Back At Mickey Spillane, The King Of Pulp

Today is crime writer Mickey Spillane's birthday. He was born on March 9, 1918, and he died on July 17, 2006. He was 88.

Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury was one of the first crime thrillers I read as a boy, and I thought it was terrific.

The novel was tough, violent and sexy. I loved the book's wild ending. I thought it was a cool book.

I went on to read better crime novels and thrillers, like the works of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ian Fleming, Eric Ambler and others, but I remember fondly Spillane's I, the Jury like one remembers his first girlfriend.

I love Spillane's "fuck you" attitude regarding critics. Despite the terrible reviews he received during his life, he sold millions of copies of his books. He wrote unabashedly for money, and he said his books were the chewing gum of American literature.

He was unabashedly conservative and unpretentious. He called his readers "customers" and said he was a writer not an author. He later became as famous for his TV beer commercials as he was for his crime novels.

Last year Max Collins and James L. Traylor wrote a fine biography of the late writer, called Spillane: The King of Pulp Fiction.” 

The biography covers Spillane’s fascinating life, from his upbringing and service as a pilot in World War II to his progression from comic book writer to best-selling crime novelist. 

I wrote two On Crime columns for the Washington Times on the biography. 

You can read my Washington Times On Crime columns on the Mickey Spillane biography via the below links:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column on 'Spillane: The King Of Pulp Fiction'

Paul Davis On Crime: A Look Back At Mickey Spillane: My Washington Times On Crime Column, Part Two, On 'Spillane: King Of Pulp Fiction' 

Max Allan Collins' True Detective: A Private Eye In Prohibition-Era Chicago

Back in April, I interviewed Max Allan Collins about his historical crime thriller The Big Bundle in my On Crime column in the Washington Times. 

The Big Bundle is the 18^th novel in the series featuring Nathan Heller, a Chicago private detective who interacts with historical figures and becomes involved in actual crimes and scandals.

 

I asked Max Allan Collins to describe The Big Bundle.

 

“In many respects, it’s a private eye thriller in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane,” Mr. Collins replied. “I was moving to a new publisher, Hard Case Crime, and knew their audience was steeped in hardboiled fiction and might be put off by the famous crimes I usually look at in a Nathan Heller novel. The real-life case in ‘The Big Bundle,’ quite well known in the 1950s but forgotten now, allowed me to put the emphasis on the noir aspect of the Heller novels and not be accused of teaching a “history lesson.”

 

I also asked him how he would describe Nathan Heller.

 

“Heller is a businessman who starts out in a small office where he sleeps on a Murphy bed and winds up with a coast-to-coast detective agency. He is not the typical Phillip Marlowe-style modern-day knight who would never take a bribe or seduce a virgin — Heller has done both and often indulges in situational ethics. Unlike most fictional private eyes, he marries (more than once) and is a father and had a father and mother and even grandparents. He ages with the years. At any age, Heller recoils at injustice in society and serves up rough justice when he feels it necessary. He not only knows where the bodies are buried, he has buried more than his share.”

 

I had not read any of Max Allan Collins previous Nathan Heller novels and I mentioned to him that I’d like to read the first one in the series, True Detective (not to be confused with the HBO series with the same name).

 

He mailed me a copy and I read the novel and thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

True Detective opens with Heller working as a young police detective in Prohibition-era Chicago. He quits the force and becomes a private detective. He becomes involved with Frank Nitti, Al Capone and other gangsters, as well as professional boxer Barney Ross, actor George Raft and federal agent Elliot Ness of The Untouchables fame.

 

The plot revolves around the assassination of Chicago Mayor Cermak while he was on stage with President Franklin Roosevelt.   

 

"I knew Chicago during Prohibition was supposed to be both dangerous and exciting, and now I know why. . .  A terrific read," wrote Donald E. Westlake

"One of the best stories I have ever read," wrote Mickey Spillane.

Like those two legendary crime writers, I too found True Detective to be a fine crime novel. I plan to read more of the Nathan Heller novels in the future.

You can purchase True Detective via the below link:

 True Detective: Collins, Max Allan: 9780312820510: Amazon.com: Books

And you can read my On Crime column on The Big Bundle via the below link:

Paul Davis On Crime: A Private Eye Witness To History: My Washington Times On Crime Column On Max Allen Collins 'The Big Bundle' 

A Private Eye Witness To History: My Washington Times On Crime Column On Max Allen Collins 'The Big Bundle'

The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on Max Allen Collins’ The Big Bundle.

This interesting and insightful crime novel is about a fictional private eye traversing through a begone era and a true and once famous child kidnapping.  

You can read the column via the below link or the text below:

BOOK REVIEW: 'The Big Bundle' - Washington Times 

In “The Big Bundle,” Max Allan Collins’ 18th novel featuring Nathan Heller, the private detective appears alongside Robert F. Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa, as well as historical crime and law enforcement figures involved in the real-life kidnapping of a millionaire’s son in 1953.

 

I contacted Mr. Collins and asked him to describe “The Big Bundle.”

 

“In many respects, it’s a private eye thriller in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane,” Mr. Collins replied. “I was moving to a new publisher, Hard Case Crime, and knew their audience was steeped in hardboiled fiction and might be put off by the famous crimes I usually look at in a Nathan Heller novel. The real-life case in ‘The Big Bundle,’ quite well known in the 1950s but forgotten now, allowed me to put the emphasis on the noir aspect of the Heller novels and not be accused of teaching a “history lesson.”

 

How would you describe Nathan Heller?

 

“Heller is a businessman who starts out in a small office where he sleeps on a Murphy bed and winds up with a coast-to-coast detective agency. He is not the typical Phillip Marlowe-style modern-day knight who would never take a bribe or seduce a virgin — Heller has done both and often indulges in situational ethics. Unlike most fictional private eyes, he marries (more than once) and is a father and had a father and mother and even grandparents. He ages with the years. At any age, Heller recoils at injustice in society and serves up rough justice when he feels it necessary. He not only knows where the bodies are buried, he has buried more than his share.”

 

Why have you written a series of crime novels based on historical events with a fictional character interacting with historical figures?

 

“Rereading ‘The Maltese Falcon’ for a college class I was teaching in the early 1970s, I noticed the 1929 copyright. I had a light-bulb moment: The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was 1929 — Sam Spade and Al Capone were contemporaries! Instead of Mike Hammer meeting a Capone type, I could have Capone meeting a Mike Hammer type. It was a fresh way into a form that had gone stale,” Mr. Collins (seen in the bottom photo) explained. “What evolved, from the initial novel about Frank Nitti’s Chicago (“True Detective,” 1983), was Heller solving famous unsolved or controversially solved crimes, like the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Black Dahila murder, the assassinations of Huey Long and JFK. Often, I substitute him for a real detective involved in a case. Heller becomes a sort of ‘private eye witness’ to history.”

 

How did you research the history that you use in “The Big Bundle”?

 

“Less was available about the Greenlease case than with most mysteries Heller has tackled — both Amelia Earhart’s disappearance, the Roswell incident, required dealing with a staggering number of books and voluminous newspaper and magazine material. Only a handful of books about the Greenlease kidnapping existed to draw upon in “The Big Bundle.” But the political aspect — Bobby Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa’s involvement in the aftermath of the ransom’s disappearance — meant referring to several dozen nonfiction works, as well as the usual newspaper and magazine articles, which the kidnapping itself also generated. The idea is that I prepare to write the definitive nonfiction book on a real crime or mystery. Then I write a private eye novel instead.

 

Did you discover anything in your research that surprised you about the kidnapping and other elements you use in your novel?

 

“Automobiles were everywhere in the narrative, befitting the postwar boom in car buying and interstate travel. Key events took place at a famous no-tell motel, the Coral Court, outside St. Louis. A crooked taxicab company was caught up in the probable theft of half the ransom, and every criminal in the case seemed either to drive a Caddy or want to — purchased inevitably at one of the many Midwestern Cadillac dealerships owned by the kidnap victim’s father.”

 

Do you plan to continue the Nathan Heller series?

 

“Too Many Bullets” has been completed, with Heller present in the pantry at the Ambassador Hotel when Robert Kennedy was shot. It’s an open-and-shut case, supposedly, yet the research indicates otherwise. In many respects, the real story is like something out of Raymond Chandler: hit men, crooked cops, a crazy hypnotist, a duplicitous showgirl. That comes out in October, again from Hard Case Crime. There may be one more after that. The degree of difficulty here is high, however, and I just turned 75, so it depends on how well Heller and I hold up.”

 

• Paul Davis’ On Crime column covers true crime, crime fiction and thrillers.

• • •

The Big Bundle
Max Allan Collins
Hard Case Crime, $22.99, 304 pages

A Look Back At Mickey Spillane: My Washington Times On Crime Column, Part Two, On 'Spillane: King Of Pulp Fiction'

The Washington Times ran my On Crime column, part two, on the fine biography of the late crime writer Mickey Spillane. 

In last On Crime column, I interviewed Max Allan Collins, the co-author of “Spillane: The King of Pulp Fiction,” a fine biography of the late crime writer Mickey Spillane.

 

Spillane, who died in 2006 at the age of 88, wrote the Mike Hammer crime novels and other crime thrillers. Although he received some of the worst book reviews ever written, his novels were bestsellers. As I noted in my previous column, Spillane was unabashedly conservative and unpretentious. He was also self-deprecating about his work, calling his novels “the chewing gum of American literature.”

 

He later became as famous for mocking his tough-guy image in beer commercials on TV as he was for his novels.

 

The late Raymond Chandler, one of my favorite writers, dismissed Spillane, having his iconic private detective character Philip Marlowe drop what he noted passed for a crime novel in a trash can — as no garbage can was available.

 

Another of my favorite writers, Elmore Leonard, felt differently about Spillane. Writing in Time magazine after Spillane’s death in 2006, Leonard wrote: “I remember when ‘I, The Jury,’ Mickey Spillane‘s first novel, came out in 1947. I was in college and had just come out of the service the summer before. Forceful and full of energy (it had to have been, since he wrote it in nine days), the book knocked me out.

 

“In 1995, as president of the Mystery Writers of America, I had the privilege of honoring Mickey with the title of Grand Master, despite some members’ objections. Whether you liked him or not, he played a key role in the development of crime fiction — I’m not sure phrases like “Hot damn!” were ever popular before he used them, and shooting a girl in the navel in “I, The Jury”? That’s as good as it gets.”

 

I contacted the other co-author of “Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction,” James L. Traylor (seen in the below photo) and asked him why he co-wrote a biography of Mickey Spillane.

 

“The reading public’s knowledge of Spillane — biographical or otherwise — was limited to press releases, the entertaining but not very informative interviews that Mickey freely gave or the Life magazine article dating from 1952. We wanted to tell the most interesting story, which was his life,” Mr. Traylor replied.

 

“Spillane’s influence was generational. He helped shape three generations of mystery and thriller writers. And the influence did not stop with fiction, but crossed over to film and TV, leading to the PI era of the late 1950s, and eventually to the success of Tarantino’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ and the current TV series incarnation of ‘Reacher,’” Mr. Traylor said. “Spillane was a master of the fast-paced turn-the-page thriller. His narrative thrust forced the reader to continue as quickly as possible to the punch ending, they knew awaited them. All the early paperback novels had this on the cover: ‘A Mike Hammer Thriller.’” 

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

Interview with James L. Traylor, co-author of 'Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction' - Washington Times

You can also read part one via the below link:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column on 'Spillane: The King Of Pulp Fiction'

My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column on 'Spillane: The King Of Pulp Fiction'

The Washington Times ran my On Crime column on the Mickey Spillane biography, Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction. 

You can read the column via the below link or the text below:

BOOK REVIEW: 'Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction' - Washington Times

 

 I read “I, the Jury” when I was a preteen and was much taken with the bold crime novel, especially the shocking ending. Those early Mickey Spillane novels left an indelible impression on this crime aficionado.

 

Mickey Spillane was unabashedly conservative and unpretentious. Despite the terrible reviews he received during his life, he sold millions of copies of his books. He called his readers “customers” and said he was a writer and not an author.

Otto Penzler, the publisher of the Mysterious Press and editor of crime anthologies, told me that he was an admirer of Spillane‘s. He noted that Ayn Rand was also an admirer and once compared Spillane’s and the late novelist Thomas Wolfe’s descriptions of a rainy night in New York. She much preferred Spillane’s brief but evocative description to Wolfe’s lengthy description, which ran for six pages.

 

Max Allan Collins (seen in the bottom photo) and James L. Traylor have written a fine biography of the late writer, who died in 2006 at the age of 88. “Spillane: The King of Pulp Fiction” covers his fascinating life, from his upbringing and service as a pilot in World War II to his progression from comic book writer to best-selling crime novelist.

I contacted Max Allan Collins, one of the co-authors, and asked him why he and Mr. Traynor wrote a biography of Mickey Spillane.

 

“Spillane was the 20th Century’s bestselling American mystery writer — second, worldwide, only to Agatha Christie — and has never been the subject of a biography before. He is often mentioned only in a dismissive manner and deserved better,” Mr. Collins replied.

 

Mr. Collins, a Mystery Writers of America grand master, is the author of the Nathan Heller historical thrillers and the graphic novel “Road to Perdition,” which was the basis of the Academy Award-winning film. He knew Spillane and completed 13 posthumous Mickey Spillane novels.

How did Spillane influence crime fiction?

 

“His influence was huge in crime fiction, but it bled into other genres and the mainstream as well,” Mr. Collins said. “To the hardboiled mystery, he brought a new level of sex and violence, which connected with the post-WW 2 loss of innocence felt by former GIs. He uncovered a market that gave birth to paperback originals, though he appeared in hardcover before being reprinted in cheap editions. His hard-hitting, vigilante-style anti-hero, Mike Hammer, paved the way for every fictional tough protagonist thereafter, from James Bond to John Shaft, from the Girl with The Dragon Tattoo to Jack Reacher.”

 

How would you describe a typical Spillane novel?

 

“Structurally, the novels are typified by a startling opening chapter that thrusts the reader into the action and a closing chapter that is even more startling, both surprising and violent, with the ending abrupt. The narrative is usually in the first-person and, in another of his innovations in the genre, the conflict is a personal one, and the emotions of the lead character run hot.”

 

How did Spillane influence you as a crime writer?

 

“I was equally influenced by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain, the founding fathers of the noir school of fiction. Spillane was the king of the next generation, and from him, I learned the value of frank action and sex and putting real emotion on the page.”

 

What was it like to know Spillane personally?

 

“He was warm and funny and extremely unpretentious, very much down-to-earth. He was generous and, I think, hurt by the critical pummeling he received, which went beyond literary criticism into blame for everything from fomenting juvenile delinquency to making pornography mainstream. The truth is, his great love was language in the service of storytelling,” Mr. Collins explained. 

 

What do you say to those who dismiss Spillane as a writer?

“Everybody has a right to an opinion, but too many who express opinions about Mickey’s work have either not read it or not read much of it. Take a look at his often-brilliant opening and closing chapters; study the ease with which Mike Hammer’s noir poetry rolls out of cynical lips dangling a Lucky Strike,” Mr. Collins said.

 

Do you think Spillane will continue to be read by crime fiction fans in the future?

“No question that the first six Mike Hammer novels will be read and enjoyed and studied,” Mr. Collins said. “It’s a bit of a pity that the first and most famous — I, the Jury — is probably the least of the early books. He got better and better, and his masterpiece is the surreal fever dream One Lonely Night, in which he answers his critics by way of a tommy-gun-wielding Mike Hammer.”

 

• Paul Davis’ On Crime column covers true crime, crime fiction and thrillers.

• • •

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction
Max Allan Collins and James L. Traynor
Mysterious Press, $26.95, 400 pages

Mickey Spillane Turns 100: Max Allan Collins On Sex, Violence, And Mike Hammer

As I noted in my Crime Beat column on the late crime writer, Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury was one of the first crime thrillers I read as a boy. I thought it was terrific.

The novel was tough, violent and sexy. I loved the book's wild ending. I thought it was a cool book.

I went on to read better crime novels and thrillers, like the works of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ian Fleming, Eric Ambler and others, but I remember fondly Spillane's I, the Jury like one remembers his first girlfriend.

I love Spillane's "fuck you" attitude regarding critics. Despite the terrible reviews he received during his life, he sold millions of copies of his books. He wrote unabashedly for money and he said his books were the chewing gum of American literature.

CrimeReads.com offers a piece by Max Allan Collins, himself a crime writer, and a friend to the late Mickey Spillane. He has completed many of Spillane’s unfinished works, included the newly published, The Last Stand.

In July of 2006, at the age of 88, the last major mystery writer of the twentieth century left the building. Only a handful of writers in the genre—Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler among them—achieved such superstar status.

Spillane’s position, however, is unique—reviled by many mainstream critics, despised and envied by a number of his contemporaries in the very field he revitalized, the creator of Mike Hammer had an impact not just on mystery and suspense fiction but popular culture in general.

The success of the paperback reprint editions of his startlingly violent and sexy novels—tens of millions of copies sold—jumpstarted the explosion of so-called “paperback originals,” for the next quarter-century the home of countless Spillane imitators, and his redefinition of the action hero as a tough guy who mercilessly executed villains and slept with beautiful, willing women remains influential (Sin City is Frank Miller’s homage).

When Spillane published I, the Jury in 1947, he introduced in Mike Hammer one of the most famous of all fictional private eyes, and one unlike any P.I. readers had met before. Hammer swears vengeance over the corpse of an army buddy who lost an arm in the Pacific, saving the detective’s life. No matter who the villain turns out to be, Hammer will not just find him, but kill him—even if it’s a her.

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

https://crimereads.com/mickey-spillane-turns-100/

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Mickey Spillane via the below link:

www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/03/my-crime-beat-column-look-back-at-crime.html 

A New Crime Novel On Mickey Spillane's 100th Birthday

Happy 100^th birthday to crime writer Mickey Spillane.

Titan Books announced today a new crime novel from the late Mickey Spillane on his 100th birthday. 

When legendary mystery writer Mickey Spillane died in 2006, he left behind the manuscript of one last novel he’d just completed: THE LAST STAND. He asked his friend and colleague (and fellow Mystery Writers of America Grand Master) Max Allan Collins to take responsibility for finding the right time and place to publish this final book. Now, on the hundredth anniversary of Spillane’s birth, his millions of fans will at last get to read THE LAST STAND, together with a second never-before-published work, this one from early in Spillane’s career: the feverish crime novella A BULLET FOR SATISFACTION.

A tarnished former cop goes on a crusade to find a politician’s killer and avoid the .45-caliber slug with his name on it. A pilot forced to make an emergency landing in the desert finds himself at the center of a struggle between FBI agents, unsavory fortune hunters, and members of the local Indian tribe to control a mysterious find that could mean wealth and power – or death. Two substantial new works filled with Spillane’s muscular prose and the gorgeous women and two-fisted action the author was famous for, topped off by an introduction from Max Allan Collins describing the history of these lost manuscripts and his long relationship with the writer who was his mentor, his hero, and for much of the last century the bestselling author in the world.

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Mickey Spillane via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/03/my-crime-beat-column-look-back-at-crime.html 

Murder Never Knocks

Muriel Dobbin reviews Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins' Murder Never Knocks for the Washington Times.

Murder is a comfortable topic in the bare knuckle world of Mike Hammer who punched his way through decades of thrillers. He is the legendary tough guy who sprang from the pen of Mickey Spillane and he has been brought to roaring life in a posthumous “last thriller.”

Max Allan Collins was an ideal choice to continue the bloody doings of Hammer. Murder begins the book with a hired killer who underestimates the private investigator and predictably winds up dead. Hammer has the kind of brutal skills that can put down three bad guys at once and tell wisecracks about it. It sounds dated but it isn’t. It is happily devoid of morality and it is doubtful anyone in it ever heard of political correctness. Which makes it a good old-fashioned read. Mr. Spillane picked the right man to move in on the pile of still-unpublished manuscripts that he bequeathed to Mr. Collins. What is interesting is that he also bequeathed a writing style that dates back through the 1950s and has an atmosphere of the film noir with men in trench coats and women who sound as if Damon Runyon would fit them into the cast of “Guys and Dolls.”

Nevertheless it is hard-bitten but solid. Hammer is always a little broke, and admits happily that he never turns down a thousand or three to keep him in his relatively modest lifestyle including the cigarettes he is trying to give up. He is still solidly enamored of Velda, his gun-packing secretary who is always where he needs her when he wants her, including in bed. And they have the kind of sophisticated relationship that didn’t become fashionable for about another 20 years when open marriage hit the happy couples. In this hard-bitten case, Hammer bounces into his next assignment to protect a Hollywood producer throwing a party for the Broadway star who is his current fiancee. Of course somebody gets killed. Murder comes calling again for one of the victims, a newsstand operator who took a bullet meant for Hammer, seriously annoying the private eye who seems offended by the ones that miss as well as the ones that find their target.

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

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/1/book-review-mike-hammer-murder-never-knocks/

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Mickey Spillane via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/03/my-crime-beat-column-look-back-at-crime.html

My Crime Beat Column: A Look Back At Crime Writer Mickey Spillane And His New Crime Novel, 'Kill Me, Darling'

Today is crime writer Mickey Spillane's birthday. He was born on March 9, 1918 and he died on July 17, 2006.

Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury was one of the first crime thrillers I read as a boy and I thought it was terrific.

The novel was tough, violent and sexy. I loved the book's wild ending. I thought it was a cool book.

I went on to read better crime novels and thrillers, like the works of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ian Fleming, Eric Ambler and others, but I remember fondly Spillane's I, the Jury like one remembers his first girlfriend.

I love Spillane's "fuck you" attitude regarding critics. Despite the terrible reviews he received during his life, he sold millions of copies of his books. He wrote unabashedly for money and he said his books were the chewing gum of American literature.

He was unabashedly conservative and unpretentious. He called his readers "customers" and said he was a writer not an author. He later became as famous for his TV beer commercials as he was for his crime novels.

Today one can read Mickey Spillane's newer crime novels, written with Max Allan Collins, a crime writer who knew Spillane and admired him. The latest Spillane/Collins novel is called Kill Me, Darling. The book is published by Titan Books.

Titan Books acquired the rights to six newly discovered Mickey Spillane/Mike Hammer thrillers. With Max Allan Collins, Titan published Lady, Go Die in 2012, Complex 90 in 2013 and King of the Weeds in 2014.
     
"Mickey Spillane is the legendary crime writer credited with igniting the explosion of paperback publishing after World War II as a result of the unprecedented success of his Mike Hammer novels feeding the public's appetite for sexy, violent, straight-talking crime stories," Titian writes of Spillane. "He also starred as Mike Hammer in The Girl Hunters. Over 225 million copies of Spillane's books have been sold internationally, since first being published in 1947. He was the bestselling author of the 20th century (even outselling Agatha Christie). Mike Hammer is his most famous creation and the precursor to characters like James Bond, Dirty Harry and Jack Bauer. In 1995, Spillane was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, the organization's highest honor. Spillane passed away at the age of 88 in 2006."

Spillane and Collin's Kill Me, Darling is a new adventure featuring Spillane's old hero Mike Hammer.

"Mike Hammer's secretary and partner Velda has walked out on him, and Mike is just surfacing from a four-month bender. But then the murder of an old cop who worked with Velda when she was on the NYPD Vice Squad attracts Hammer's attention. What's more, Pat Chambers reveals that Velda is in Florida, the moll of gangster and drug runner Nolly Quinn," Titan says of the new novel. "Hammer hits the road and drives to Miami, where he enlists the help of a newspaperman and a police detective. But can they find Velda in time? And what is the connection between the murdered vice cop in Manhattan, and Velda turning gun moll in Miami?"

Max Allan Collins, the author of Road to Perdition and a series of novels about a professional killer called "Quarry," is Spillane's personally chosen literary executor.

"Mickey Spillane has been a huge part of my private and professional life since childhood," Collins said. "We became friends in the early 1980s... Over the years, Mickey entrusted me with numerous unpublished manuscripts, including a number of half-completed Mike Hammer novels. Shortly before his death, he said to his wife Jane, "When I'm gone, it will be a treasure hunt around here. Call Max - he'll know what to do with what you find." Last year's King of the Weeds was the last of these half-finished novels that it's been my privilege to complete"

Collins went on to say that he was setting out to complete at least three more somewhat shorter but significant Hammer manuscripts-in-progress, and Kill Me, Darling is the first.

"Mickey's manuscript of Kill Me, Darling begins a s an earlier take on his classic The Girl Hunters (1962), in which a drunken hammer is dragged by the cops to the home of Captain Pat Chambers,"  Collins said. "At this point, the manuscript goes in an entirely different direction. Kill Me, Darling was begun as a follow-up to Kiss Me, Deadly (1952), likely around 1953 or '54, the time frame I've used for the narrative, making it one of the earliest of the unfinished Hammer novels, dating to his greatest period."

Thanks to Titan Books and Collins, Mickey Spillane is entertaining a new generation of crime fiction readers.

Three New Novels From Long Gone Crime Writers

Steve Stephens at the Columbus Dispatch wrote a piece on the new novels from three deceased crime writers.

Famous crime-fiction scribbler James M. Cain, dead for 35 years, has a new book out, as do two other stiffs you might have heard of: Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane.

It’s no mystery why publishers would want stories from guys who, although their bodies are as cold as yesterday’s cheese sandwich, still have reputations as hot as the troubled dame who always seems to enter the picture.

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

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/life_and_entertainment/2012/09/02/new-titles-from-dead-dont-dig-own-graves.html

Note: I have all three crime novels  - Dashiell Hammett's Return of the Thin Man,  James M. Cain's The Cocktail Waitress, and Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collin's Lady, Go Die - on a table in my basement office and I look forward to reading them and reviewing them here in the near future.