Mickey Spillane

Born in Brooklyn in 1918, Mickey Spillane would become the master of a genre with his creation of Mike Hammer, private eye. He was baptized with one name, Michael, in a Catholic church and christened with another, Frank Morrison, in a Protestant church. He'd later use both names for writing.

Spillane began writing in high school-when he wasn't playing football or swimming. After a few years of college, he began comic book writing until World War II broke out. He enlisted and he became a fighter pilot instructor.

He wrote his first novel to raise $1,000 to build a house for his family in New York. It was this book that introduced Mike Hammer. From 1947 to 1952, Spillane wrote seven novels before taking nearly a decade off and pursuing other interests.

In 1962, he not only wrote another Mike Hammer novel, The Girl Hunters, but he co-wrote the screenplay and starred in it as Mike Hammer. This would launch a successful acting career that accelerated even as he continued to write.

Spillane died in July 2006.

Bibliography

Mike Hammer	Others
I, The Jury	The Long Wait
My Gun is Quick	The Deep
Vengeance is Mine	The Day of the Guns
One Lonely Night	Bloody Sunrise
The Big Kill	The Death Dealers
Kiss Me Deadly	The By-Pass Control
The Girl Hunters	The Delta Factor
The Snake	The Erection Set
The Twisted Thing	Last Cop Out
The Body Lovers	The Day the Sea Rolled Back
Survival.Zero	The Ship That Never Was
The Killing Man	Something's Down There
Black Alley
	Collections
	Me, Hood
	Return of the Hood
	The Flier
	Killer Mine
	The Tough Guys
	Vintage Spillane
	Tomorrow I Die

--B. Redman