Spillane

November 15, 2022
A full-dress biography of the most polarizing practitioner of 20th-century crime fiction. As Collins and Traylor note, nearly everyone deplored the sex and violence of Mickey Spillane's (1918-2006) midcentury novels about private eye Mike Hammer--though that didn't stop the millions of readers who catapulted him to the top of bestseller lists and kept him there. Delving into Spillane's roots, the authors examine the evolution of comic-book hero Mike Lancer into Mike Hammer, cite contemporaneous reviewers who talked up or trash-talked Hammer's adventures, and explore Spillane's multimedia activities during the 10 years (1952-1962) of Hammer's absence from the printed page. (Why the long silence? Collins and Traylor believe Spillane was waiting for his disadvantageous contract with film producer Victor Saville to expire). Warning in their opening chapter of spoilers ahead, the authors proceed to summarize the mysteries and solutions of all Hammer's early novels. They're at their best when mapping the Spillane metaverse, which includes novels, stories, articles, comic strips, radio broadcasts, TV programs, and movies, and weakest in their uncritical praise of their subject as a plotter, stylist, Jehovah's Witness, and human being (a verdict his first two wives might have contested). "Mickey encouraged our best efforts, all the while sharing his humanity, generosity, and down-to-earth nature," they write. "This book reflects not just our love for his work, but for the man, with thanks for his encouragement and friendship." Spillane's appealing directness provides an endless stream of anecdotes. The authors conclude with a formidable array of appendices, ranging from an autobiographical fragment that takes Spillane from birth to age 14 to an essay on "Ayn Rand and Mickey Spillane" to a brace of bibliographies and an account of some of their own extensive dealings with the author when he was alive and the work Collins has continued to complete since his death. Fans who've been waiting for a life of Spillane will gobble this up.

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Starred review from December 19, 2022
In 1947, Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) unleashed his hyperbolic private eye and WWII vet, Mike Hammer, on the world with I, the Jury, a revenge saga that featured a major infusion of sexual innuendo and unfettered violence that scandalized not only other mystery writers but also the publishing industry and beyond. In this illuminating biography, the first devoted to Spillane, MWA Grandmaster Collins (the Nathan Heller series), a late-life collaborator of Spillane’s, and critic Traylor provide incisive analysis of Spillane’s unique career. Employing exhaustive research and their access to Spillane’s personal archives, the authors move from Spillane’s precocious childhood to his time at comic book publisher Timely writing text fillers; his WWII service as a flight instructor; the epic breakthrough with the Signet/NAL paperback edition of I, the Jury; the superstar years of 1948–1953, when each Mike Hammer novel was reprinted in the millions; and his surprise conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness movement. Spillane’s growing appetite for acting and star-making turn in the 1970s as a TV pitchman for Miller Lite beer is recounted in colorful detail, while his long-delayed triumph in being named a Grand Master by his MWA peers in 1995 is quite affecting. The book concludes with several highly informative appendices, including Collins’s fascinating “Completing Mickey Spillane.” This definitive work is indispensable for any fan of the revolutionary Spillane and his two-fisted novels. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Feb.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misspelled coauthor James L. Traylor's last name.

Starred review from January 1, 2023
Collins, who is the executor of Mickey Spillane's estate and has completed numerous novels left unfinished when the ""King of the Pulps"" died in 2006, joins coauthor Traylor, also a Spillane expert, to produce a knockout biography of the best-selling mystery writer of the twentieth century. Spillane developed his crime-writing chops in comics shortly after WWII and then turned to novels with I, the Jury, which marked the first appearance of the iconic private eye Mike Hammer. The novel was published in hardcover in 1947 but soon found its true home in paperback, where the Signet edition sold a stunning 6.5 million copies. The next five years brought four more Hammers (there were 13 in all), each selling in the millions and all lambasted by liberal critics and bluestockings alike. Collins and Traylor do an outstanding job analyzing Spillane's impact on the publishing industry, and they are equally sharp in assessing why the Hammer novels' dreamscape vision of postwar Manhattan, ""at once gritty and surreal,"" was so attractive to alienated vets. That and the sex and violence, of course. But there's more to this story than Spillane's books. The authors also detail his fascinating personal life, including his baffling flirtation with Jehovah's Witnesses and his later stint as a popular pitchman for Miller Lite. A thoroughly engrossing life story and an indispensable account of the rise of paperback publishing.

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