Taking up Mickey Spillane's mantle | Books | The Guardian Fiction Taking up Mickey Spillane's mantle Before his death in 2006, America's one-time bestselling crime writer entrusted the draft of his final Mike Hammer novel to friend and fan Max Allan Collins. The writer explains what it was like to complete his mentor's manuscript A tough act to follow ... Mickey Spillane back in the day in his studio in 1952. Photograph: AP Share on Messenger Close Mickey Spillane had unfinished business when he died in 2006. The hard-boiled heavyweight who, in his prime, would dash off thrillers in a matter of days, hadn't finished the final outing of his hot-headed New York detective Mike Hammer. The Goliath Bone , a valedictory case set in the wake of 9/11, lay incomplete. But the 88-year-old Spillane was determined to give his hero the send-off he deserved and, before he died, entrusted the book to mystery writer Max Allan Collins, who has been a Hammer fan since adolescence. So what is it like to finish the novel of a friend who also happens to be the bestselling American crime writer of the last century?

When I call the lively, good-humoured Collins at home in Iowa, it sounds like he still can't believe he met his hero, let alone was charged with safeguarding his legacy. It's an honour, a responsibility and a "kid-in-the-candy-store sensation," he says. "Mickey had been creating these half-manuscripts and setting them aside throughout our friendship, and I had a reasonable expectation that I'd be chosen to complete them. Just days before his death, he told his wife Jane, 'When I go, there's going to be a treasure hunt around here. Give everything to Max – he'll know what to do with it.'" Last year, Collins prepared the first posthumous Spillane novel, a non-Hammer adventure named Dead Street, for publication. He believes he's the right man for the job because he has a fan's "sense of wonder" about Spillane, but can also "take his toolbox up to the workshop and – if you pardon the expression – get the hammer and nails out." It helps that he shares Spillane's expertise in writing crime fiction and comics (his graphic novel The Road to Perdition became an Oscar-winning film).

Collins grew up glued to detective shows including the Mike Hammer series starring Darren McGavin as the shamus with the short fuse. "I started looking at the Spillane novels on the spinner racks of paperbacks at the local drugstore," the 60-year-old writer remembers. "Aged 13, on a family vacation, I risked trying to buy One Lonely Night. The clerk asked me if I was old enough, and I said I was 16. One Lonely Night, of course, is the wildest, most outrageously violent of any Mike Hammer novel. I spent the vacation in the backseat of the family car, ignoring God's scenery and taking in Spillane's melodrama." Hooked, he worked his way through the Hammer canon, which opens with I, the Jury (1947), Hammer's mission to avenge the murder of a friend. ("I don't want to arrest anybody," he quips. "I just want to shoot somebody.") His glamorous assistant is Velma, a devoted secretary-cum-PI whose snug dresses show off what look like "the curves in the Pennsylvania Highway". The book's sentences scream into action with the emergency of a police siren.

It is the very essence of pulp fiction: written at speed, gulped down by punters. If not the smartest of sleuths, Hammer is undoubtedly the hardest. Collins suggests the anger can be traced to Spillane's time in the air force during the second world war: "Mickey had been such a good pilot that he wound up stateside, instructing other pilots, and never got into the action. So you had a certain survivor's guilt going there. The postwar world was a mess – not the promised land Mickey and other GIs had been told about. These frustrations came out in the writing. Plus, he wanted to write popular fiction that guys like him could relate to – there'd been a loss of innocence in that war, and he felt if he could reflect that, he'd find an audience. He was right." The books made Spillane the world's bestselling author for many years, and Collins was among the many who sent him fan mail: "He didn't respond until I sent him my first two published novels, and he wrote back warmly, welcoming me to the profession.

Letters after that went unanswered, so I was nervous when the people putting on [crime fiction convention] Bouchercon in 1981 told me Mickey was set to be a guest of honour, and they wanted me to be liaison. The organisers took me around to his hotel room, somebody knocked and Mickey answered – he wasn't tall but was very broad-shouldered, enormously powerful, charismatic. They introduced me and Mickey said offhandedly, 'Oh, I know Max! We've been corresponding for years!' I said, 'Right, Mickey – 100 letters from me, one from you!'" Collins anthologised Spillane's short stories in the 80s, and they created the concept for a comic book, which Collins wrote, about Mike Danger, a sci-fi version of Hammer. Over the years, Collins increasingly found himself defending his friend's work. What were the charges? "He got hit on from all sides – the left found him a right-wing fanatic, due to his vengeance-taking hero and the occasional use of 'Commies' as bad guys. The right disapproved of the sexual frankness and rough language.

Both sides disliked his violent action – his opening of the door onto extreme violence and frank sexuality changed everything in popular culture. His impact was equal to Elvis Presley's." So how does Hammer fare in the 21st century? Set in the shadow of 9/11, The Goliath Bone finds the PI babysitting two students in possession of a gigantic femur that might have belonged to the Philistine giant. The novel's real historical relic, however, is the geriatric Hammer himself: he's an anachronism, as bewildered by GPS as the spread of international terrorism. The book takes place some 50-plus years after I, the Jury, which makes Hammer a septuagenarian at kindest, but Collins jokes that he doesn't encourage readers to "do the math" of Hammer's age. Collins has always aimed to be a "modern-day hard-boiled writer" but how did he approach the task of writing in another author's style? "I concentrated on the last two Hammer novels that Mickey wrote, The Killing Man and Black Alley, really listening to the voice. I had 10 or 12 chapters in rough-draft form, and half of the final chapter.

But the chapters were perhaps half the length they needed to be. I needed to expand and enhance what was there." The Goliath Bone is a "genuine collaboration", says Collins – "not me picking up where Mickey left off". That sets it apart from Poodle Springs, the final outing for Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, which Robert B Parker concocted from an abandoned Chandler manuscript. Both valedictory novels happen to find their hard-boiled hero tying the knot. "From fairly early on, Mickey intended to marry Mike and Velda off in the last Hammer," says Collins. "The difference between Poodle Springs and The Goliath Bone – besides the fact that Mickey had done almost a complete rough draft whereas Chandler did only a couple chapters – is that Mike is marrying the co-star of the series, not some minor character from a previous novel. There's no question that Mike wouldn't marry Velda – didn't Tarzan marry Jane?" The story doesn't quite end there, however: Spillane left Collins enough material for five more novels, including two from the 1960s and one each from the 80s and 90s.

"The most exciting is one from around 1948, what would have been the second Mike Hammer novel had Mickey completed it." And there's more: "If the public warms to Mike Hammer again, there are another half-dozen shorter manuscripts – a chapter or two each – that could keep him going for another good decade." Mickey Spillane is dead … long live Mike Hammer. Mickey Spillane | Books | The Guardian Mickey Spillane Bestselling writer of shoot-em-up crime novels Mickey Spillane: macho mystery writer Share on Messenger Close "Women," he claimed in later life, 'liked the name Mickey". Other accounts suggest that "Michael" was the middle name his Catholic father had him baptised under; "Morrison" was the name his Protestant mother put on the birth certificate. Few at his fraught christening would have foreseen the arrival of the 20th century's bestselling novelist, Mickey Spillane who has died aged 88 of cancer. His father, John Joseph Spillane, was an Irish American bartender. Young "Frank" was brought up in the "very tough" neighbourhood of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Under the superintendence of his mother, Catherine, the Spillane home was less tough. He claimed to have read all Melville and Dumas before he was 11. After high school, Spillane went on to Kansas State College, starred briefly on the football field and dropped out. In the de rigueur way, he kicked around in the Depression 1930s, working for a while as a Long Island lifeguard ("women" liked that too). In 1935 he began submitting his work to "slick" (ie illustrated) magazines, "working my way down", as he later recalled, "to the comic books: Captain Marvel, Captain America, Superman, Batman - you name it, I did them all." It was, he thought, "a great training ground for writers. You couldn't beat it." Fast-order work would be Spillane's speciality. I, the Jury, was written in nine days. When the car containing his manuscript of The Body Lovers was stolen he claimed to be only concerned about the loss of his wheels: "the missing manuscript just means another three days work." Spillane served in the US army airforce during the second world war.

By his own account he flew fighter missions and taught cadets how to fly. In interviews he claimed two bullet wounds and a civilian knife scar sustained working undercover with the FBI to break up a narcotics ring. In 1945 Spillane Married his first wife - of three - Mary Ann Pearce. There were two sons and two daughters. On demobilisation he worked in Barnum and Bailey's circus as a trampoline artist (the setting is used in his 1962 novel, The Girl Hunters) and claimed a professional proficiency with throwing-knives. More profitably, Spillane returned to writing. Story-magazines were losing ground to 'paperback originals' - pulp novels selling to the masses at 25 cents. Spillane duly turned out I, the Jury in 1947. It drew on the hard-boiled "private investigator" tradition pioneered by Black Mask magazine in the 1930s although the most famous product of that coterie, Raymond Chandler, disdained Spillane as a writing gorilla: "pulp writing at its worst was never as bad as this stuff".

Spillane himself acknowledged the influence of only one crime writer, the now-obscure John Carroll Daly, creator of the private eye Race Williams. Spillane flaunted his lack of authorial polish claiming (mischievously) never to introduce characters with moustaches or who drank cognac because he didn't know how to spell the words. I, the Jury introduced the series hero Mike Hammer whose hard-drinking, tough-talking, woman-beating, whisky-swilling machismo answered the needs of the postwar "male action" market. Estimates suggest global sales of around 200-million. By 1980, seven of the top 15 all-time bestselling fiction titles in America were by Spillane. "People like them," he blandly explained. Hammer is less a detective than an ultra-violent vigilante. I, the Jury lays down the formula. Mike's marine "buddy" Jack, who lost an arm saving Hammer's life in the Pacific, is sadistically murdered. Hammer sets out to avenge him, skirting the niceties of the law, vowing to his friend's corpse: "I'm going to get the louse that killed you.

He won't sit in the [electric] chair. He won't hang. He will die exactly as you died, with a .45 slug in the gut, just a little below the belly button." So it goes (even though "he" turns out to be a gorgeous "she"). Spillane astutely exploited the market he had created with Hammer with Vengeance in Mine (1950), My Gun is Quick (1950), The Big Kill (1951), and Kiss Me Deadly (1952). All hit the mark. It is never clear how Spillane's hero supports himself or how he pays his faithful secretary with the "million-dollar legs", Velda. Prodigious cocksman though he is, Mike respects Velda too much to take sexual advantage of her, although she loves him madly. Broads and hoods are never in short supply. Hammer is always outnumbered by the criminal enemy: "There are ten thousand mugs that hate me... they hate me because if they mess with me I shoot their damn heads off." The climax of a Mike Hammer narrative invariably features sadistic execution.

The most hilarious is in Vengeance is Mine, which ends with the line (just before she/he gets it in the gut) "Juno was a Man!". The link was often made between Spillane and Joe McCarthy, and over the years Hammer's victims were as likely to be "reds" as "hoods". In One Lonely Night (1951) the hero mows down 40 communists with a machine gun (in the original text, the number was 80 - but the publishers "thought that was too gory"). Spillane regarded himself as a super-patriot, and was so regarded by others. John Wayne gave him a Jaguar XK140 for his anti-communism and Ayn Rand (author of Atlas Shrugged) publicly commended his prose style to her disciples. Spillane's patriotism was, however, always tinged with a pessimistic, quasi-religious sense of doom, and in the early 1960s he predicted a race war in America. The Hammer novels are written as "spoken" monologue and are stylistically direct. Spillane had great faith in the slam bang opening, believing that "the first page sells the book".

He claimed never to read galleys or rewrite. He had, however, an odd compulsiveness about punctuation, and once insisted that 50,000 copies of Kiss Me, Deadly be pulped when the comma was left out of the title. The Hammer novels enjoyed new leases of life in film, radio, comic-strip and television adaptation. I, the Jury was twice filmed (1953, 1982), as were other of the Hammer books. The only film which has any distinction is Robert Aldrich's exaggeratedly noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Spillane disliked it - not least for the missing comma. Possessed of ruggedly good looks, Spillane himself played Hammer in the film of The Girl Hunters (1963), turning in a commendable performance. He also played cameo roles in other films. There were two successful television series based on Mike Hammer, the first in the late 1950s and the second, 1984-87, starring Stacy Keach in a periodised, semi-noir, 1950s setting, with Spillane's sex and violence carefully bleached out.

As an author of pulp, Spillane's guiding principle was that "violence will outsell sex every time", but combined they will outsell everything. As part of the promotion for his novels he adopted a Hammeresque persona which was transparently an act. He once informed a British interviewer, "I always say never hit a woman when you can kick her." When asked "is that the treatment you give Mrs Spillane?", Spillane primly replied, "we're talking about fiction." There were three Mrs Spillanes. He divorced the first and married Sherri Malinou in 1964. A model 24 years his junior, she caught Spillane's eye when she was featured on the cover of one of his books. He called the agency and asked them to send over the blonde with the beautiful butt: "they sent her over, and I never sent her back." He used her (nude) on the cover of The Erection Set. The marriage, however, broke up, and Spillane married Jane Rodgers Johnson in 1983; he had two stepchildren, Britt and Lisa.

From 1954 Spillane lived, with his successive families, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Here he sailed, fished and resolutely did not play golf. He always dressed in black and white. As in his novels, he liked to keep things simple. There are two long gaps in Spillane's authorial career. The first followed his conversion to the Jehoavah's Witnesses in 1952. This led to a ten-year hiatus in the writing of novels - although he was earning substantially from subsidiary rights over this period. He returned to writing in 1961 with what is reckoned to be the best of the Hammer novels, The Deep. Between 1961 and 1972 the novels came out with the old facility and Spillane created a new series hero for the decade, Tiger Mann - launched with Day of the Guns (1964). Mann is a "secret agent" and witnesses to Spillane's sense that his thunder had been stolen by James Bond. Spillane claimed not to be worried by Ian Fleming ("he's a gourmet"). But the reading public, fickle as ever, never returned in their former record-breaking droves.

The non-series books, The Erection Set (1972) and The Last Cop Out (1973) were heavily hyped but comparative failures, as were the second-generation Hammer books, The Twisted Thing (1966), The Body Lovers (1967), Survival Zero (1970). Post-Chatterley and post-Last Exit to Brooklyn, Spillane had lost the power to shock. There was another gap, between 1973 and 1989, in which Spillane again wrote no full-length fiction, although he did try his hand (as a dare with his publisher) at two well-received children's books, The Day the Sea Rolled Back (1979) and The Ship That Never Was (1982). During this period he was famous to the American television-watching public for his appearance in Miller Lite beer commercials (Spillane was reported not to have been a heavy drinker). On his return to Hammer fiction with The Killing Man (1989) Spillane was in his seventies, so were what remained of his faithful readers and, if one calculated, Hammer himself should have been drawing social security.

A suspicious number of reprints of the early novels were in large-type. The Guardian reviewer of The Killing Man (1990) was kind but dismissive. Spillane hammered on with Black Alley (1996), although by now his bolt was clearly shot. He reportedly suffered a stroke in his later years. Over the last decades (to his disgust, one suspects) he received increasing critical respect for his contributions to the idiom of crime fiction and for his having played a pioneer's role in the postwar paperback revolution. Frank Morrison (Micky) Spillane; writer, born March 9 1918; died July 17 2006 BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Detective novelist Spillane dies Detective novelist Spillane dies Spillane relished his tough-guy image US crime writer Mickey Spillane, who created the tough private eye Mike Hammer, has died at the age of 88. He wrote his first novel, I The Jury, in 1946. Two dozen books followed, including 12 Mike Hammer novels. Notable titles included The Killing Man, Vengeance is Mine, and My Gun is Quick.

His book Kiss Me Deadly was made into a classic 1955 film noir. Spillane's literary trademarks were violence and a blunt, gritty style. He died at his home in South Carolina. There was no immediate word on the cause of death. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1918, Spillane grew up in neighbouring New Jersey, and started his career as a comic strip writer. If the public likes you, you're good Mickey Spillane The writer, whose real name was Frank Morrison Spillane, became a Jehovah's Witness in the early 1950s. He had few literary pretensions, and said that "If the public likes you, you're good". Spillane had critics among fellow writers. Rival detective novelist Raymond Chandler described his work as "nothing but a mixture of violence and outright pornography". But Spillane was immune to such criticism. "Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar," he once pronounced.

Mystery writer Mickey Spillane dies - TODAY.com Today.com Mystery writer Mickey Spillane dies 2006-07-17T21:47:45.000Z Mickey Spillane created tough guy detective Mike Hammer, whose savage, shoot-’em-up exploits wowed millions and influenced Hollywood’s film noir movement. But he considered himself a writer, not an author. Books by writers, he said, are the ones that sell. “This is an income-generating job,” he told The Associated Press in a 2001 interview. “Fame was never anything to me unless it afforded me a good livelihood.” The macho mystery writer died Monday at 88. Spillane’s wife, Jane, told The (Myrtle Beach) Sun News that he had cancer. Visitation was scheduled for Saturday at the Goldfinch Funeral Home, and a memorial service will be held July 29 at the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall near Spillane’s Murrells Inlet home, about 80 miles northeast of Charleston.

After starting out in comic books, Spillane wrote his first Hammer novel, “I, the Jury,” which was published in 1947. Twelve more followed, with sales topping 100 million. Notable titles included “The Killing Man,” “The Girl Hunters” and “One Lonely Night.” Many Hammer books were made into movies, including the classic film noir “Kiss Me, Deadly” and “The Girl Hunters,” in which Spillane himself starred. Hammer stories were also featured on television in the series “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer” and in made-for-TV movies. In the 1980s, Spillane appeared in a string of Miller Lite beer commercials. “Thanks, Mickey, for giving the world so much pleasure during your time with us,” actor Stacy Keach, who portrayed Hammer on TV in the 1980s, said Monday in a statement. “We shall miss you, but we are comforted by the knowledge that your work and Mike Hammer will live forever.” More than just HammerBesides the Hammer novels, Spillane wrote a dozen other books, including some award-winning volumes for young people.

Nonetheless, by the end of the 20th century, many of his novels were out of print or hard to find. In 2001, the New American Library began reissuing them. As a stylist, Spillane was no innovator; the prose was hard-boiled boilerplate. In a typical scene, from “The Big Kill,” Hammer slugs a little punk with “pig eyes.” “I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone,” Spillane wrote. “I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel ... and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling.” Mainstream critics had little use for Spillane, but he got his due in the mystery world, receiving lifetime achievement awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Private Eye Writers of America. “What I liked about him was he was always aware of who and what he was,” said mystery writer Robert Parker, 73, whose novels feature Boston private eye Spenser.

“He said to me once, ’I don’t have readers, I have customers.’ And I don’t think anyone, even in the solemnity of death, would argue that Mickey was a great writer, but he was a good guy and he was a successful writer and the combination ain’t bad.” Spillane, a bearish man who wrote on an old manual Smith Corona, always claimed he didn’t care about reviews. He was born Frank Morrison Spillane on March 9, 1918, in the New York borough of Brooklyn. He grew up in Elizabeth, N.J., and attended Fort Hays State College in Kansas, where he was a standout swimmer, before beginning his career writing for magazines. He had always liked police stories — an uncle was a cop — and in his pre-Hammer days he created a comic book detective named Mike Danger. At the time, the early 1940s, he was writing for Batman, SubMariner and other comics. “I wanted to get away from the flying heroes and I had the prototype cop,” Spillane said. Danger never saw print. World War II broke out and Spillane enlisted.

When he came home, he needed $1,000 to buy some land and thought novels the best way to go. Within three weeks, he had completed “I, the Jury” and sent it to Dutton Books. The editors there doubted the writing, but not the market for it; a publishing franchise began. His books helped reveal the power of the paperback market and became so popular they were parodied in movies, including the Fred Astaire musical, “The Band Wagon.” ‘Quintessential’He was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in good and evil. He was also a rare political conservative in the book world. Communists were villains in his work and liberals took some hits as well. He was not above using crude racial and sexual stereotypes. Viewed by some as a precursor to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry, Spillane’s Hammer was a loner contemptuous of the “tedious process” of the jury system, choosing instead to enforce the law on his own murderous terms. His novels were attacked for their violence and vigilantism — one critic said “I, the Jury” belonged in “Gestapo training school” — but some defended them as the most shameless kind of pleasure.

While the Hammer books were set in New York, Spillane was a longtime resident of Murrells Inlet, a coastal community near Myrtle Beach. He moved to South Carolina in 1954 when the area, now jammed with motels and tourist attractions, was still predominantly tobacco and corn fields. Spillane said he fell in love with the long stretches of deserted beaches when he first saw the area from an airplane. The writer, who became a Jehovah’s Witness in 1951 and helped build the group’s Kingdom Hall, spent his time boating and fishing when he wasn’t writing. In the 1950s, he also worked as a circus performer, allowing himself to be shot out of a cannon and appearing in the circus film “Ring of Fear.” The house in which he lived for 35 years was destroyed by the 135-mph winds of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Married three times, Spillane was the father of four children.

50 crime writers to read before you die - Telegraph 50 crime writers to read before you die Scheming: a scene from the film The Talented Mr Ripley, adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel Frances Fyfield's recent work has relaxed into a more comfortable format 12:01AM GMT 23 Feb 2008 From G K Chesterton to Elmore Leonard, The Daily Telegraph presents a list of of its favourite crime writers of all time Robert B. Parker talks After a debate that left senior members of the Telegraph's literary staff with pulled hair, black eyes and, in one case, an infected bite, we this week present our list of the 50 great crime writers of all time. We present them in no particular order, and make no apology for our omissions. But we would like to know what you think. Should Ellery Queen have been two of the names on the list? Hate Highsmith? Log on, or write in, and say so. We wanted to compile a list of writers we had, jointly and severally, loved.

We wanted to include writers like Dash Hammett, who brought something new and exciting to the genre; like Elmore Leonard, who turns an old trick in it with incomparable style; and like Poe, who invented it. We did not, except incidentally, take into account popularity. Who, we asked ourselves finally, are the crime writers who can actually write? We believe any serious reader will profit from acquaintance with any of the writers on this list. And, just because we love you, as a bonus 51st entry we interview Robert B Parker - an unrivalled pulp stylist who may be the best crime writer you've never read. GK Chesterton 1874-1936 The most fluent journalist of his generation, Gilbert Keith Chesterton was also a master of the detective story. Father Brown - his sceptical and worldly-wise priest - featured in dozens of exquisite entertainments. Settle into a comfy chair and enjoy. SL Read: The Complete Father Brown (1986) Arthur Conan Doyle 1859-1930 Conan Doyle's pipe-smoking detective is so well known that Sherlock has become a synonym for sleuth.

He never said the catchphrase; the illustrator gave him the hat; continuity errors abound… but he's brilliant. SL Read: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 Poe was a man of formidable talents - not least of which, sadly, was drinking himself to death. Before that, though, he gave us fiction's first detective, in Auguste Dupin, and hairiest murderer, in an orang-utan. SL Read: The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) Ed McBain 1926-2005 As well as writing the script for Hitchcock's The Birds, McBain (real name: Evan Hunter) more or less invented the police procedural. The detectives of Isola's 87th Precinct wise-cracked for half a century, and their spare style was the prime influence on Hill Street Blues.

SL Read: King's Ransom (2003) Kyril Bonfiglioli 1929-85 A raffish former art dealer, Bonfiglioli created - in Charlie Mortdecai - an antihero (also a raffish art dealer) of irresistible charm. Charlie has the manner of a demented Bertie Wooster and the morals of a polecat. Great titles, too. SL Read: The Mortdecai Trilogy (1991) James Ellroy 1948- Ellroy's labyrinthine novels chart a West Coast underworld of corruption and evil, played out against real historical events. Bent cops, nightsticks, psychopaths and seductresses. Makes The Silence of the Lambs resemble a vicar's tea party. SL Read: The Black Dahlia (1987) Janwillem van der Wetering 1931- The capers of Grijpstra and de Gier, aka The Amsterdam Cops, are oddly appealing. One plays the drums; the other the flute. They frequent canals. There's a cat. Unique and very Dutch.

SL Read: Outsider in Amsterdam (1975) Carl Hiaasen 1953- A master of the comic crime novel, Hiaasen patrols Florida's Everglades. His villains are big business, petty crims and That Mouse. Skink, a feral former Florida governor who lives off roadkill, often features. SL Read: Double Whammy (1987) Dashiell Hammett 1894-1961 It’s a cinch to argue that Hammett was the most influential stylist of the past century and probably the father of the modern literary novel. After honing his style on pulp magazines, he famously proved that high literary art was not only possible, but best achieved, through spare rather than florid or heavily mannered prose. He influenced Raymond Chandler, who then inspired generations of writers to explore the lyrical possibilities of laconic, muscular writing while instinctively rejecting popular pre-Hammett styles as dull or overwrought. Hammett created revolutionary models for the morally ambiguous hero (Sam Spade) and the equal partnership of modern marriage (Nick and Nora Charles) now so universal that we have forgotten our debt to him.

Reprinted in 2004, his Continental Op stories proved so stunningly fresh that the 1920s hero could have carried a Blackberry without raising eyebrows unduly. JJ Read: The Maltese Falcon (1930) Dan Kavanagh 1946- In the 1980s, the shady, elusive Kavanagh - crime-writing alter-ego of Julian Barnes - produced four grimy, winningly absurd tales starring Duffy, a bisexual ex-copper with a heart of coal. SL Read: The Duffy Omnibus (1991) Margery Allingham 1904-66 Often taken as one of a trio with Marsh and Sayers, Allingham has a pace and frivolity all her own. She created a world that manages to be reassuring yet fraught with danger. TC Read: The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) Charles Dickens 1812-1870 Like his friend Wilkie Collins, Dickens was obsessed with crime. Bleak House's Inspector Bucket is one of the first detectives in fiction. It's a pity that The Mystery of Edwin Drood will forever remain unsolved.

SR Read: Bleak House (1852-3) Georges Simenon 1903-1989 Fabulously prolific Belgian master, said to have schtupped more than 10,000 ladies and written more than 300 novels. We don’t know how long he spent on each lady, but he reckoned to write 60 pages of fiction a day. His greatest creation was Maigret, an unassuming detective with a brain like a sponge and the quiet moral determination of a true hero. Other detectives deduce; Maigret absorbs. The best of the novels drop Simenon’s detective into a social environment in which, by doing very little, he unravels a whole world of secrets and interconnections. So it is in The Yellow Dog, in which a small town in the gloomy off-season gives up its private passions one by one to the detective’s patient observation. A whole school of modern detectives still walks in Maigret’s large footprints.

SL Read: The Yellow Dog (1931) Agatha Christie 1890-1976 Christie did not have the purest prose style and she played hard and fast with the genre's rules but in Marple and Poirot, she invented two of our most enduring literary characters. TC Read: Peril at End House (1932) Wilkie Collins 1824-1889 The Moonstone established the genre's ground rules: red herrings; a long list of suspects; the man from Scotland Yard, and a nod to a pressing social issue, in this case opium addiction. TC Read: The Moonstone (1868) Jonathan Latimer 1906-83 Admired for his William Crane novels of the 1930s, which parodied hard-boiled crime fiction. Where most private eyes drink like fish with little effect, boozy Crane is more often found sleeping it off than detecting. JK Read: The Fifth Grave (1941) Ruth Rendell 1930- Ruth Rendell, the creator of Inspector Wexford, is one of Britain's best-loved writers.

She brought psychological realism and darker themes to crime fiction in novels such as Talking to Strange Men and Live Flesh. SR Read: The Water's Lovely (2006) Ngaio Marsh c. 1895-1982 A New Zealander who created a quintessentially English detective, the dishy Roderick Alleyn, who featured in 32 sparkling novels. Female fans' hearts were broken when Alleyn eventually married. JK Read: Vintage Murder (1937) Benjamin Black 1945- Black's two novels set in 1950s Dublin, in which lumbering pathologist Quirk investigates suspicious deaths, are bracingly bleak. Also known to the police as John Banville. JK Read: Christine Falls (2006) John Dickson Carr 1906-77 The master of the "impossible crime", he claimed to have come up with 80 versions of the locked-room mystery, usually solved by his Falstaffian sleuth Dr Gideon Fell. Also wrote as Carter Dickson.

JK Read: The Hollow Man (1935) Michael Innes 1906-94 An Oxford don who wrote inventive crime fantasies. Crooks are more likely to get caught by quoting from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam than by fingerprints when erudite copper John Appleby is about. JK Read: The Weight of the Evidence (1943) Raymond Chandler 1888-1959 He may have forgotten to tell us who murdered the chauffeur in The Big Sleep, but otherwise Chandler can't be faulted. Every reluctant step Philip Marlowe takes through California's mean streets carries him further into legend. JK Read: Farewell, My Lovely (1940) Friedrich Dürrenmatt 1921-90 The most famous of this Swiss author's chilling novellas is The Pledge, in which a policeman finds his Holmes-like powers are useless for dealing with the real world's random brutality.

JK Read: The Pledge (1958) Michael Gilbert 1912-2006 The stories featuring Mr Calder and Mr Behrens, two seemingly benign old boys who are actually ruthless secret service assassins, are examples of this underrated writer's unnervingly civilised approach to horrific violence. JK Read: Even Murderers Take Holidays and other Mysteries (2007) Donald Westlake 1933- The king of the comic caper, whose novels usually feature amiable criminals bungling their way into sticky situations. The novels he writes as "Richard Stark", featuring the amoral thief Parker, are darker fare. JK Read: What's So Funny? (2007) Colin Bateman 1962- Any appearance by Bateman's regular protagonist, journalist Dan Starkey, heralds the imminent death in amusing fashion of half the population of Belfast. Comic thrillers that are actually comic and thrilling.

JK Read: Wild About Harry (2001) Frances Fyfield 1948- Fyfield emerged as a rival to Minette Walters when publishers in the mid-1990s were obsessed with grim, cod-psychological nasties inspired by Ruth Rendell. She's relaxed into a more comfortable format. JJ Read: The Art of Drowning (2006) Reginald Hill 1936- Everyone thinks they know Hill through the TV series "inspired" by his creations Dalziel and Pascoe - to the extent that they miss his writerly flourishes and teasing way with readers. He's a victim of his own success. JJ Read: Good Morning Midnight (2004) Andrea Camilleri 1925- Camilleri's writing suits his hero Inspector Montalbano, a Sicilian with a broad sense of humour. Camilleri's real subject is the state of Sicily, but his characters are vivid and their dilemmas eternal.

TC Read: The Patience of the Spider (2007) Henning Mankell 1948- Each book finishes with fatty Wallander crashing about the bushes in a tracksuit, but the Swede's existential misery is delightful and every novel is absorbing and satisfying. TC Read: Sidetracked (1999) Patricia Highsmith 1921-1995 No one reads Patricia Highsmith for consolation: there is rarely a happy ending in which order is restored, and her complex, morally ambiguous characters are just as likely to escape justice as to receive it. Highsmith’s career was kick-started by Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film version of her 1950 novel, Strangers on a Train, but Tom Ripley (who also appeared on screen, in The Talented Mr Ripley) is her most infamous creation, and he appeared in five of her novels, chilly and scheming and repellent. There is a worrying strata of authentic darkness that underpins her work, and it is no surprise that she lived a peculiar, isolated life, during which she preferred the company of snails to humans.

TC Read: The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) James Lee Burke 1936- A decade ago, Lee Burke gave the gritty lyricism of his series about alkie Louisiana cop Dave Robicheaux full rein and created a one-man revival of Southern Gothic writing. One of America's finest novelists in any field. JJ Read: Black Cherry Blues (1989) Jim Thompson 1906-1977 There was no more brutal and brilliant exponent of old-style pulp than the “Dime Store Dostoevsky” – Jim Thompson. Thompson churned out more than 30 novels in the course of his drunken, borderline criminal life. Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me are both narrated by murderously unhinged small-town lawmen, who mask their moral vacuity with goofy homespun wisdom. The Grifters shows the noose tightening nastily on small-time cons. The Getaway follows a viperous Bonnie-and- Clyde-style pair of robbers on the run, pitching them finally into a chilling hell of their own making. Thompson’s novels are set, largely, in a world where there are no good guys.

Dark as hell, his books are all the darker for being funny. SL Read: The Getaway (1959) Walter Mosley 1952- Mosley's Easy Rawlins is a classic film noir gumshoe with the twist that he's a black war vet at the dawn of the civil rights crusade. Bill Clinton named Mosley as a favourite. JJ Read: Devil in a Blue Dress (1991) Denise Mina 1966- In Mina's Garnethill novels, an ex-mental patient clinging to sanity in the underbelly of Glasgow isn't as grim as it sounds. Her wit and warmth render the trials of her heroine oddly life-affirming. JJ Read: Garnethill (1999) Steig Larsson 1954-2004 A crusading Swedish journalist who died in 2004, leaving the manuscripts of three thrillers. They have received high praise and the first volume, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has just been published here.

JK Read: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008) Ronald Knox 1888-1957 Knox gained fame as a Roman Catholic priest but made a huge contribution to Golden Age crime. Miles Bredon (Dorothy L Sayers stole the surname for Peter Wimsey) is an insurance investigator in The Three Taps; there are five other books. He coined the 10 commandments of the detective novel in 1929 and was later reduced to translating the Bible. AMcK Read: The Viaduct Murder (1925) EC Bentley 1875-1956 Inventor of the Clerihew and a schoolmate of GK Chesterton. Trent's Last Case (1913) is a landmark in detective fiction because it breaks several of the form's cardinal rules. AMcK Read: Trent's Last Case (1913) Lawrence Block 1938- Block shows a love of the cosy locked-room school in his Burglar series. His genius is in full flower in the Matt Scudder series, about a hard-boiled ex-cop investigating sleazy crimes.

AMcK Read: All the Flowers Are Dying (2005) Edmund Crispin 1921-1978 Bohemian schoolmaster Bruce Montgomery (aka Crispin) spoofed post-war crime fiction with great larkiness. His dotty professor and amateur sleuth, Gervase Fen, even admits he's a fictional character. JJ Read: Holy Disorders (1945) William McIlvanney 1936- McIlvanney, a considerable mainstream novelist, has set three crime novels in Glasgow: Laidlaw, The Papers of Tony Veitch and Strange Loyalties. They probably inspired the TV series Taggart, but are far more intelligent and subtle. AMcK Read: Laidlaw (1977) George V Higgins 1939-1999 Elmore Leonard acknowledges Higgins as his major influence. His books are almost all in (foul-mouthed, funny, well observed, poetically cadenced) dialogue. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the best known but none are duds.

AMcK Read: The Rat on Fire (1981) Dorothy L Sayers 1893-1957 Sayers was responsible, with Agatha Christie, for fixing in the public mind the idea (demonstrably false) that women are particularly good at crime writing. Unlike Christie, Sayers was. She was good at writing, full stop. She translated Dante’s Inferno when it was little-known, except to specialists, and wrote a radical radio play about Christ which caused an outcry. Sayers had her faults. She was donnish and high-jinxy to a degree which might have made even other members of the High Oxford school (Michael Innes, Edmund Crispin) blush. In Clouds of Witness she alludes to a fairly obscure quotation. Lower-class characters drop their aitches left, right and centre, while Lord Peter is perhaps too much of a good thing, even as snobbish wishfulfilment. Some think the solution to The Nine Tailors is a swizz; but the genius of the missing item in Five Red Herrings is, on its own, enough to confirm her greatness.

AMcK Read: Five Red Herrings (1931) Anthony Boucher 1911-68 The revered US crime fiction critic also created characters such as Nick Noble, a former cop who props up a bar while his ex-colleagues bring him their trickiest cases. JK Read: The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940) Mickey Spillane 1918-2006 Creator of brutish but honest private dick Mike Hammer, who, by bashing the bejesus out of crooks, helped make Spillane one of the best-selling writers of the 20th century. JK Read: I, the Jury (1947) James Grady 1949- His thrillers set ordinary people in dangerous situations engendered by government greed and corruption. His first novel, Six Days of the Condor, was made into a film. JK Read: Six Days of the Condor (1974) George Pelecanos 1957- The pulp fiction bard of the sleaziest side of Washington DC. The capital's rigid firearms laws generate imaginatively grisly alternatives to the traditional shoot-out.

JJ Read: The Big Blowdown (1996) Robert Crais 1954- Just when you think there can't be a new take on the old "PI with a mildly psychotic sidekick" formula, Crais proves you right. Elvis Cole is a homage, but also a labour of literary love. JJ Read: The Watchman (2007) John Lawton 1949- Lawton immerses a newspaper baron's son, Inspector Troy, in the scandals of post-war Britain. His skewed social history is utterly absorbing. JJ Read: Black Out (1995) Elmore Leonard 1925- Leonard owes much to George V Higgins, but his snappy dialogue, learned as a copy-writer, slick prose and plotting are instantly recognisable.

"If it sounds like writing," he says,"I rewrite it." TC Read: Maximum Bob (1991) Max Allan Collins remembers Mickey Spillane - Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind July 18, 2006 Max Allan Collins remembers Mickey Spillane As soon as the news broke, the first person I thought of was Max Allan Collins , who not only is a notable crime writer, filmmaker and graphic novelist, but was a close friend of Spillane's since they met 25 years ago at Bouchercon in Milwaukee. Though he's in the midst of finishing up a book, Collins was kind enough to write a short tribute for publication here. It appears below. *** What contemporary mystery readers (and writers) need to know about Mickey Spillane is simply this he was the most important American mystery writer of the 20th century. Note I didn't say "best," or even "most popular," though cases could be made in either case. But even those who don't care for his work -- and his detractors were many, just not legion like his fans -- need to accept his importance.

His Mike Hammer novels revitalized the mystery field in the post-war period, in particular the private eye story. The books were so hardhitting and (for their time) sexy that the standard for what was acceptable in popular fiction changed drastically -- once Mickey opened the door, a franker treatment and escalated level of sex and violence were the norm. Though his Hammer novels first appeared in hardcover, they led to the creation of the paperback original. His distributor, Fawcett, started Gold Medal Books -- the first major publisher of non-reprint paperbacks -- to fill the market for Spillane-type material. Hammer himself, with his vigilante tendencies and willingness to sleep with women, changed the tough guy hero forever. Without Hammer there is no Dirty Harry, certainly no James Bond, and SIN CITY is Frank Miller doing Spillane outright (and not getting called on it, because reviewers today have the sense of history of a gnat). Spillane was the first author of popular fiction to achieve massive celebrity. He posed in Hammer mode with fedora and guns on book covers. John Wayne starred Mickey AS Mickey in the 1954 movie, RING OF FEAR (out on DVD just recently).

Mickey appeared as Mike Hammer in THE GIRL HUNTERS (1961). Did Agatha Christie ever star as Miss Marple? Are there any movies with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle playing Sherlock Holmes? Don't think so. He had a remarkable 18 year stint, playing a spoofy Hammer-like version of himself, in the wildly successful Miller Lite commericals. He played the guest victim on a COLUMBO. He even appeared in two indie thrillers, MOMMY and MOMMY'S DAY, directed by some obscure mystery writer from Iowa. Finally, though he is dismissed as a misogynist (by critics who never read him), Spillane created strong women characters -- villains sometimes, but also Hammer's P.I. partner, the beautiful Velda. He created a fever-dream noir New York that, thankfully, we can visit again and again. And he was my son's godfather. Grant me the self-indulgence to give that a special importance.

Max Allan Collins Mickey Spillane · OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries Sign up Mickey Spillane 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. He also starred as Mike Hammer in The Girl Hunters. Mickey Spillane died at the age of 88 in 2006. Max Allan Collins is the author of Road to Perdition, the acclaimed graphic novel that inspired the movie, and of the multiple-award-winning Nathan Heller series of historical hardboiled mysteries. Max Allan Collins is one of most prolific and popular authors working in the field today. He is also the literary executor of Mickey Spillane. Sort Mike Danger Mike Danger Created by Mickey Spillane According to legend, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer was originally meant to be a comic book eye called MIKE DANGER. After his comic attempts were rejected in 1946, Spillane (a former writer for the Timely Comics line) tried to sell it as a comic strip.

According to Mike Benton in his The Illustrated History of Crime Comics , "In 1947, Spillane wrote a "Mike Danger"comic strip for the newspapers. Drawn by Mike Roy and offered by Jerry Iger's syndicate, the comic strip appeared briefly in New York area newspapers and disappeared. Spillane decided to leave the world of comics to become a mystery writer." In fact,writer and Spillane fan extremis Max Allan Collins thinks this is probably a mistake, and questions whether the Danger strip was ever actually published. He figures Benton may have confused a non-existent Danger strip with the later From the Files of... Mike Hammer . As Max points out, "I've seen lots of Iger sydicated stuff, and comics collectors know about my Spillane fixation...if this existed, I'd have seen an example by now." (At this point, if anyone can straighten this out, both Max and I would be extremely grateful.) Either way, though, Danger wasn't the success Spillane had hoped for. Spillane changed the character's last name to Hammer, and decided to turn it into a novel.

But, seven years after Mike Danger was rejected by his publisher, the unsold stories actually did make an appearance -- in Crime Detector #3 and 4 in 1954. Evidently someone dug up the pages for Spillane's original Mike Danger comic book and published them. The intro to the first story let's us know what we're in for: "He's rough...he's tough...he's terrific! 190 pounds of bone and muscle...and afraid of nothing! He backs up the law with his two fists and a .45 slung under his left armpit, ready to slug or shoot it out anyplace, anytime! Yes, meet Mike...but be smiling when you do!" And that's the story of Mike Danger, until 1995, when fellow P.I. writer and long-time champion Max Allan Collins dusted off the original name and had another whack at it, with a comic book. But the Mike Danger of the 1990's is a far cry from what Spillane originally envisioned.

Sure, MIKE DANGER's a tough-talkin', babe-lovin', two fisted, hard-drinkin' yadda yadda yadda kinda P.I., straight out of the 1950's, a sort of pre-Hammer figure. But then Collins really gets cute (and it's almost certainly Collins running the show here, despite Spillane's name being plastered all over. Instead of leaving Danger back in the bosom of the Eisenhower decade, he's catapulted a hundred years into the future and ends up with a new office in the head of the Statue of Liberty and a holographic replica of his old secretary (long-time dead) Holly. And what a passionless, proper, squeaky-clean future it is. Eating meat is a felony, "incorrect" political views are illegal, and you can be fined for saying the wrong thing to a woman. Charged with murder after killing a would-be assassin in self-defense (in 2052 there's no such thing as "justifiable homicide"), he beats the rap with an offbeat defense-he's dead! Since he supposedly died a century earlier, he can't be charged with any crime.

However, because his remains were found on bigshot Simon Holden's land, Mike is Holden's property. Eventually, Mike manages to get back home, but by then both the storyline and the publisher were running out of steam, and the book vanished. Too bad. The direction the book was taking showed some promise, with Mike continuing to become involved in some rather hinky doings; sort of an X-Files with tailfins. Not a bad series, but Collins has done much better, more solid work, both in comics ( Ms. Tree , Johnny Dynamite ) and straight novels ( Nate Heller ). The editor, Christopher Mills, was also the editor of the late, lamented Noir mystery mag, The Detectives comic book, and Shadow House. He wrote an ongoing series for that publication called Nightmark, which is a hard-boiled detective/horror fiction hybrid, very much in the pulp tradition. It's about a PI named Gideon King , who's also a monster hunter." Aren't they all? At one point Mike Danger was optioned for a feature film by Ed Pressman, producer of "The Crow" and "Judge Dredd." nothing came of it...

COMIC STRIPS Appeared in New York area papers Written by Mickey Spillane The New Mike Hammer (TV Series 1984–1989) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error The cases of Mickey Spillane's classic private eye character. Creator: An Australian private detective approaches Hammer to find a missing author. Her only clue is 'The Face', Hammer's mysterious woman. He catches up with the The Face and finds out her story. Together ... 8.6 An elderly couple goes to Mike and tells them that they placed all their money in gold. And the one handling their money won't give it to them. Mike initially tells them to go to a lawyer he knows. ... 8.3 Hammer is on the sidelines at a football game when the quarterback is killed. Hammer investigates and finds that there were plenty of reasons because man was into gambling and throwing games. However...

7.8 a list of 26 titles created 14 Oct 2013 a list of 36 titles created 11 Jan 2015 a list of 24 titles created 28 May 2015 a list of 42 titles created 7 months ago a list of 21 titles created 2 weeks ago Title: The New Mike Hammer (1984–1989) 6.9/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 1 Golden Globe. Another 1 win & 2 nominations. See more awards » Photos Stacy Keach's original portrayal of the title character is revived with a new Velda and a different cop as his friend. Mike's cases are arranged to reflect the times of the late '90's. Stars: Stacy Keach, Shane Conrad, Shannon Whirry Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry, two of the most wanted outlaws in the history of the West, are popular "with everyone except the railroads and the banks", since "in all the trains and banks ...

See full summary » Stars: Ben Murphy, Roger Davis, Pete Duel Mystery/suspense series based on Robert Parker's "Spenser" novels. Spenser, a private investigator living in Boston, gets involved in a new murder mystery each episode. Stars: Robert Urich, Avery Brooks, Ron McLarty The Korean War MASH unit veteran operates as Chief Surgeon in a major city hospital with his colleagues. Stars: Pernell Roberts, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Charles Siebert Rick Hunter is a renegade cop who breaks the rules and takes justice into his own hands. Partnered with the equally stunning and rebellious Sgt. McCall, the tough-minded duo set out to crack down on L.A.'s slimiest criminals. Stars: Fred Dryer, Stepfanie Kramer, Charles Hallahan Matt Houston is a wealthy Texan who moves to California to oversee his family's offshore drilling enterprises but spends most of his time dabbling in his private investigator hobby. Stars: Lee Horsley, Pamela Hensley, Lincoln Kilpatrick The stories of the students and faculty of the New York City High School for the Performing Arts.

Stars: Debbie Allen, Carlo Imperato, Gene Anthony Ray A bald, lollipop sucking police detective with a fiery righteous attitude battles crime in his city. Stars: Telly Savalas, Dan Frazer, Kevin Dobson Two brothers of disparate tastes and manners run a private detective agency. Stars: Jameson Parker, Gerald McRaney, Mary Carver Wheelchair-bound detective Robert T. Ironside battles the bad guys on the streets of San Francisco. Stars: Raymond Burr, Don Galloway, Don Mitchell A veteran cop with more than 20 years of experience is teamed with a young Inspector to solve crimes in San Francisco. Stars: Karl Malden, Michael Douglas, Reuben Collins A young girl is kidnapped and there is an attempt on the daughter of an well-known actress. The kidnapper then turns up dead. Hammer is hired to protect the girl and travels to Los Angeles, where she is then kidnapped. Director: Ray Danton Edit Storyline Mike Hammer is a two-fisted private eye. He's tough, he's honest, and the girls love him. The series follows his exploits as he solves a variety of crimes, most of which involve a murder somewhere along the way...

Written by Afterburner <aburner@erols.com> 26 January 1984 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia There were fewer episodes in the 1984 season due to the fact that Stacy Keach had to serve a six-month jail sentence in England after being convicted of cocaine possession. See more » Connections (Taiping, Malaysia) – See all my reviews One could only dream to be a P.I. like the Mikey himself. Semi-Classic noir-style work. One could hate watching this series first time around. But surely, after some viewing you'll back for more. Okey, the dialog are Z-class, the acting are so-so and women might felt male chauvinism is on the prowl. Heck, where can you find a guy who's seems could dodge bullet when he's slower than a jumping hare? How about those one-liners reply when bashing up the bad guys or flirting up a chick? Speaking of chicks, Mikey does his best to have the right enjoyment with different lady (or sometimes ladies) every different week.

And yet he's fantasizing about the Face. Sigh, he could even live another day without getting paid at the end of the story. Yeah, I might be freaking weirdo who like this series. Just like the other 80's stuff being replayed on TV like The A-Team, MacGyver & Santa Barbara (duh). Then again, I always wait for the appearance of Velda on the show. (p.s. anybody knows her whereabouts nowadays?) 7 of 10 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes

Question: Which crime writer created 'Mike Hammer'?
Answer: Mickey Spillane