About the Author

Mickey Spillane is one of the world’s bestselling novelists, with sales of over 200 million copies worldwide of his more than 30 books. In 1995 he was named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America, and published his thirteenth Mike Hammer novel the following year. This collection is the first-time-ever omnibus featuring the first three novels by the living master of the hard-boiled mystery. Mickey currently lives with his wife in South Carolina.

Mickey Spillane - Mike Hammer Series 1-19 (Also two 'Hammer' shorts; 'Skin' & 'It's in the Box')

"The monicker is Mike Hammer, kid. I'm a private eye."
--Please allow him to introduce himself, I, the Jury

"I don't want to arrest anyone. I just want to shoot somebody."
-- Mike Hammer in I, the Jury

"There's no such thing as innocence - innocence touched with guilt is as good a deal as you can get."
-- Mike Hammer in Kiss Me, Deadly.

Whatever else you may think about MIKE HAMMER, one word may well be appropriate: extreme. The Hammer books are not only extreme in their subject matter, but they also have a tendency to provoke an extreme reaction. The first - and best known - in the series, I, The Jury, quite literally takes no prisoners. Written in six days it is a pulp classic. Avenging a friend's death, Hammer makes his mark following a code of violence which allows nothing to stand in his way. The bloody ending leaves no room for anything much, let alone subtlety. Extreme indeed but there is no questioning the impact of the book or the fact that, in picking up where Race Williams left off, Hammer was in the classic P.I. mold.

The reaction from Spillane's peers was equally extreme. Few writers have been as disliked as much as Spillane. Anthony Boucher maintained that I, The Jury should be "required reading in a Gestapo training school". The books, however, sold in their millions (by the early 80's Spillane had sold nearly 150 million). But the genre continued to shun him. Although Hammer received a 'life long achievement' award from the Private Eye Writers of America, no similar honour was forthcoming from the Mystery Writers of America. Hated by the 'liberal' writing establishment - for some reason - Hammer very probably represented a rampant right wing and reactionary politics. This is entirely in keeping with his historical context - the expansionist and paranoiac 50's America - an age when America lost what little innocence it could pretend to have.

Call him sexist, perverse or psychotic, Mike Hammer wouldn't have even understood what you were talking about - and would definitely not have liked it even if he did. "...Kill 'em left and right, show 'em that we aren't so soft after all. Kill, kill, kill, kill" (One Lonely Night). Its interesting to note, for example, that the vogue for extreme violence - take any film from Dirty Harry to Natural Born Killers - is given huge support in opposing its censorship by the very people who would also condemn Hammer.

Hammer certainly took no prisoners. Within the first five books forty-eight people die violently - thirty-four of whom had Hammer to thank for their untimely demise. The books are littered with an almost casually extreme violence: a cigarette lighter flicked into an eye, clothes stripped of a woman who is a communist and who is then whipped. Whatever you thought about Hammer, he was not one to walk away from the fight. One Lonely Night for example sees Hammer take on a liberal judge who condemns his actions. Critics? Who needs them?

Whatever else you say or think, it's hard to ignore Mike Hammer.