Mickey Spillane: Mickey Spillane, whose Mike Hammer private eye novels generated a post-second World War storm of literary criticism for their level of sex and violence, and made Spillane one of the best-selling authors of the 20th century, died last Monday, aged 88, at his home of more than 50 years in the South Carolina coastal fishing village of Murrells Inlet.
A former comic-book writer and US army air forces veteran, the Brooklyn-born Spillane arrived on the literary scene in 1947 with the publication of his first novel, I, the Jury, which introduced his tough-guy New York City private detective.
With his wartime best friend having been found murdered as the novel opens, Hammer vows to find out who did it and let the killer have it the same way his pal got it, with "a .45 slug to the gut, just a little below the belly button". The book concludes with what has been called the most infamous ending in hard-boiled fiction.
After discovering the killer is the seductively beautiful woman he has fallen for, Hammer plugs her with a .45 slug to her naked belly. The book's final three lines were:
"How c-could you?" she gasped.
I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.
I, the Jury was blasted by the critics, but Spillane was unconcerned. "I pay no attention to those jerks who think they're critics," he proclaimed . "I don't give a hoot about reading reviews. What I want to read is the royalty cheques."
First published in hardback by EP Dutton, I, the Jury did not become a worldwide phenomenon until it was released as a 25-cent Signet paperback. By 1952, some four million copies reportedly had been sold.
Its success led to a dozen more Mike Hammer mysteries over the decades, including, in quick succession, My Gun Is Quick (1950), Vengeance Is Mine! (1950), One Lonely Night (1951), The Big Kill (1951) and Kiss Me, Deadly (1952).
With Hammer, Spillane secured his place in the pantheon of such mystery greats as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. But Spillane was said to have an edge over the more critically acclaimed creators of private eyes Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.
Indeed, Spillane's success spawned a Mike Hammer radio show, a cartoon strip (written by Spillane) and three TV series, as well as a couple of Mike Hammer TV movies in the 1980s and a handful of earlier motion pictures, including Robert Aldrich's 1955 film noir classic Kiss Me, Deadly, starring Ralph Meeker, and The Girl Hunters (1963). In the latter, Spillane himself donned a trench coat and fedora to become the only mystery writer ever to portray his own fictional sleuth on film. But Spillane achieved his greatest fame as a pop-culture icon when he spoofed himself, again outfitted in the traditional private-eye garb, in more than 110 commercials for Miller Lite beer from 1973 to 1989.
Spillane's celebrity status prompted a succession of fans to seek him out at his home in Murrells Inlet, just south of Myrtle Beach.
He once pointed his shotgun at the pilot of a helicopter hovering overhead to give its tourist-passengers a close look at Spillane's house. But he typically welcomed fans - at least those who approached by land - and he was more likely to reach into an ice chest and offer an uninvited guest a cold beer.
"I have no fans," Spillane told the Washington Post in 1984. "You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friend."
Despite his wealth, Spillane was a man of simple tastes, one who enjoyed fishing from his 24-foot boat and driving a Ford pick-up truck that he called his "Carolina Cadillac".
Spillane lived up to his colourful persona. He dove for buried treasure in the Florida Keys, once rode with moonshiners and revenue agents in Appalachia, raced stock cars and toured as a trampoline artist with Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey. He was even shot out of a cannon.
But, contrary to his tough-guy image, Spillane was a father of four children and a Jehovah's Witness convert who has been described by journalists as being soft-spoken, affable and articulate - a man who spiced his conversations with phrases no more offensive than "by golly", "my word" and "son of a gun".
The only child of an Irish Catholic bartender father and a Presbyterian mother, he was born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn on March 9th, 1918. He was given the saint's name Michael when he was baptised in the Catholic Church, and his father thereafter called him Mickey.
Spillane grew up in a tough neighbourhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and began writing as a teenager. He said he "turned pro right out of high school", writing short stories for Collier's and other "slick" magazines as well as "pulps" such as Dime Detective.
After three years at Fort Hays State University in Kansas, he returned to his birthplace of New York and ultimately landed a job as a scriptwriter-assistant editor at Funnies Inc, where he proved to be the company's most prolific writer. Whereas other writers took a week to produce an eight-page story, Spillane churned out his stories for Captain Marvel, The Human Torch and other titles in a single day.
Joining the army the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Spillane served as a cadet flight instructor in Florida and Mississippi and rose to the rank of captain. In 1945, he married the first of his three wives, Mary Ann, with whom he had his four children - Kathy, Ward, Michael and Caroline.
In 1946, with the comic-book business in a post-war slump and needing $1,000 to buy a parcel of land near the Hudson River community of Newburgh, New York, Spillane came up with a way to raise the money: write a novel. Inspired by Mike Danger, a two-fisted private-eye character he had developed for a comic book whose publication was waylaid by Spillane's enlistment in the army, he began writing. In what has variously been reported as either nine, 16 or 19 days, he completed I, the Jury.
He never failed to take delight in recalling the time, during the early years of paperbacks, when "some New York literary guy" approached him at a dinner party and said, "I think it's disgraceful that of the 10 best-selling books of all time, seven were written by you."
To which Spillane replied: "You're lucky I've only written seven books."
In all, Spillane wrote 53 books, which reportedly have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, and include his Tiger Mann spy series.
He also wrote a couple of children's books, including The Day the Sea Rolled Back, which won a Junior Literary Guild Award.
In 1995, Spillane received the Mystery Writers Association's Grand Master for Lifetime Achievement award.
Spillane divorced his first wife in 1962 and was later married to actress Sherri Malinou, whom he also divorced. In 1983, he married Jane Rodgers Johnson, a fitness teacher 28 years his junior who had been the first runner-up in Miss South Carolina in 1965.
Mickey Spillane: born March 9th, 1918; died July 17th, 2006