Mickey Spillane 100
March 9, 2018
Today, March 9, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of American writer Mickey Spillane, a prolific author of crime fiction and creator of the hard-boiled private detective Mike Hammer. Spillane’s works (particularly the Mike Hammer books) were very popular in the 1950′s and 1960′s, selling more than 200 million copies. Spillane’s novels spawned a number of motion pictures, including one—The Girl Hunters (1963)—that starred the author himself. Spillane was born on March 9, 1918. He died on July 17, 2006.
Spillane grew up in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. He began his writing career contributing stories to inexpensive magazines and comic books. During World War II (1939-1945), Spillane served as a flight instructor in the United States Army Air Corps. After the war, his first Mike Hammer novel, I, the Jury (1947), was a sensational success. The book caused controversy, however, because of its blend of explicit sex and brutal violence. Hammer appeared in 12 more Spillane novels: Vengeance Is Mine! (1950), My Gun Is Quick (1950), One Lonely Night (1951), The Big Kill (1951), Kiss Me, Deadly (1952), The Girl Hunters (1962), The Snake (1964), The Twisted Thing (1966), The Body Lovers (1967), Survival…Zero! (1970), The Killing Man (1989), and Black Alley (1996).
Spillane retired from writing novels from 1952 to 1961 but returned to detective fiction with The Deep (1961). In Day of the Guns (1964), he created the character of international special agent Tiger Mann, who became the central character for another series of books. Spillane also wrote the screenplay for the 1963 film adaptation of The Girl Hunters and played the role of Hammer in the movie. He had previously acted in the motion picture Ring of Fear (1954), and he later appeared in television commercials in the 1970′s and 1980′s.
Spillane’s other novels include Bloody Sunrise (1965), The Death Dealers (1965), The Erection Set (1972), The Last Cop Out (1973), and Something Down There (2003). Spillane wrote two children’s books, The Day the Sea Rolled Back (1979) and The Ship That Never Was (1982). A collection of his short stories was published as Tomorrow I Die (1984).