Mickey Spillane: the Last Tough Guy

by
Thomas McNulty^©

I once met Mickey Spillane at a convention in Chicago where he was signing autographs with Max Allan Collins and promoting Mike Danger, his new comic book. In my enthusiasm that morning I stuffed a pile of Spillane paperbacks into my backpack. Then I grabbed a few more. Thus armed, I made my way to the convention hall where I waited in line for over an hour with countless fans.

The line was slow-moving and my arms ached from my bundle. Finally it was my turn and I gratefully set the stack of books on the table before Mickey. His eyes widened as he appraised the mountain of books. Worried that he might think signing all those books would be an impossible task, I blurted out "I was going to bring more, but I thought the people in line behind me would have killed me!"

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Mickey thought this over a moment. He arched an eyebrow and gave me a steely-eyed gaze that reminded me of his tough guy Mike Hammer in the film version of The Girl Hunters. "Hell, I woulda killed ya," he finally growled. Then he laughed, asked my age, and when I told him (I was thirty-something then) he said with a throaty chuckle, "You young guys today are real slick." And he signed all the books and a few photos for me as well.

My experience with Mickey Spillane is not unusual. Other fans have mentioned to me his seemingly endless patience, his affable personality, his endearing kindness. For a tough guy, he was as nice as they get.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1918 and began his writing career in the mid-thirties writing comic book scripts. During World War II he served as a flying instructor for the U.S. Army Air Force. After the war he picked up his writing career in ernest. His first novel, I, the Jury, was published in 1947 to instant acclaim.

His early Hammer novels are saturated with hardboiled mood as evidenced by the opening lines of The Big Kill (1951): "It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick."

There is that feel in his books for old New York – the post-war tough guy New York populated by writers like Irwin Shaw or James Jones – a New York that wasn't so sleek and swift and bright. There were crummy saloons and dingy jazz joints here where commies, beatniks, and anarchists peered out of cigarette haze while whispering sweet nothings of expatriate verse. Back then a woman could be called a "dame" (a derivative of 'damsel') without being offended. This was the old New York that was already fading away by 1955.

And the battle lines were clearly drawn. In Spillane's books the bad guys are easy to spot. Mike Hammer is the last noble Knight; a man driven by a quest to honor his own brand of moral conviction. Hammer pulls no punches with the sleazy pinko scum out to pervert the American Dream. He lets them have it with his smoking Army .45 or with his bare knuckles. And he enjoys it.

In order to preserve his dream, Hammer becomes like his enemies, a killing machine without mercy. "My madness saved me." Hammer muses in Vengeance Is Mine. "It flowed into my veins giving me the strength for a tremendous, final effort."

In today's politically correct world, the critics have not been kind to Spillane. Some claim his books are too violent, too masochistic, and too chauvinistic. Maybe they are. But I like their simplicity and directness.

And detective fiction has changed, too. The modern shamus is no descendent of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe or Mike Hammer; he is a strange creature, a hermaphrodite who won't drink or use profanity, a grown up Nancy Drew or Hardy Boy with a religious agenda. Modern detective fiction has become a pantywaist conglomerate of flawed clones.

Over the years Spillane has mentioned he was influenced by a pulp writer named Carroll John Daly. There are similarities in style, but Spillane excelled where Daly faltered. For a comparison see Daly's story Mr. Sinister in the anthology Tough Guys & Dangerous Dames edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Martin Greenberg.

Mike Hammer is clearly a child of the pulps. Originally, the character was called "Mike Danger" and was intended as a comic book series. But he turned the concept into the novel I, The Jury instead. "I was writing stuff for Captain America comics," Spillane told me in 1994, "But I didn't think the concept would work. Then I wrote I, The Jury."

The "Mike Danger" concept was shelved for fifty years until Spillane revived the character in a comic book series scripted by Max Allan Collins. The series didn't last, but Spillane and Collins continued working together, most recently in the 1995 film version of Collins' suspense novel Mommy. They have also worked as co-editors for several mystery anthologies.

Mickey Spillane once said he made Mike Hammer his age so he would always know what he was thinking. This leads to some interesting cultural references, as in One Lonely Night (1951), a book that pits Mike Hammer against commie spies during the height of McCarthyism. While eavesdropping one rainy night, Hammer is offended by some unpatriotic comments. His view of such people is uncompromising: "The lump of vomit in the center of each crowd was a Judas sheep trying to lead the rest to the ax."

The testosterone cranks through One Lonely Night the way fuel makes an engine roar. Hammer is an avenging angel driven by his mad passion: "I lived only to kill the scum and the lice that wanted to kill themselves. I lived to kill so that others could live. I lived to kill because my soul was a hardened thing that reveled in the thought of taking the blood of the bastards who made murder their business."

The violence and raw sexuality that made his books so appealing had detractors early on. The criticism was hot and heavy in 1952 when several scathing attacks on Spillane appeared in print. Even the noted poet Ogden Nash jumped on the bandwagon when he penned this dribble: "The Marquis de Sade/Wasn't always mad./What addled his brain/Was Mickey Spillane."

In 1954 Spillane appeared on film as himself in Ring of Fear. The film was produced by John Wayne and helped cement Spillane's tough guy image.

After the sixth Hammer novel, Kiss Me Deadly (1952), Spillane didn't publish another book until he revived Hammer in The Girl Hunters (1962). The subsequent film version featured Spillane in a starring role as his own creation, a film that has achieved cult status. It is for a good reason that aficionados consider The Girl Hunters the definitive film incarnation of Mike Hammer.

Mickey Spillane is Mike Hammer. He swaggers through the role with the no-nonsense, bare-knuckles bravado readers expect from Mike Hammer. The film's added attractions include a jazzy musical score and the bosomy Shirley Eaton as the femme fatale sporting a delightful bikini. But Spillane is the centerpiece.

Over the years there were other books, including two acclaimed children's stories, but the Mike Hammer novels remain his crowning achievement. In 1996 Spillane published The Black Alley, the most philosophical of all Hammer novels.

Now in his seventies, Hammer still has that edge, but he ruminates on mortality and takes the first step toward marrying his long love, Velda. The least violent of the Hammer novels, The Black Alley, is a meditation on life. Its traditional detective story plot has Mike Hammer sleuthing out clues with the bloodhound tenacity and in the 1970s a series of crime novels whose covers featured beautiful nude women became instant bestsellers. The The Erection Set (1972) and The Last Cop Out (1973) reaped millions and revitalized his career. Spillane had accomplished the seemingly impossible – he managed a literary comeback without being away.

In 2003 he published Something's Down There, a taut, masculine adventure novel set in the Bermuda Triangle. It was the last book published during Spillane's life. Mickey Spillane died at the age of 88 in 2006.

Shortly before he died Spillane entrusted Max Allan Collins with his outlines and voluminous notes, asking him to complete his final novels. The first of these, Dead Street, was published by Hard Case Crime in 2008. Forthcoming will be another Mike Hammer novel, Kings of the Weeds, also completed by Max Allan Collins. Fans can also look forward to Spillane's last completed novel, The Last Stand, at a later date.

Spillane had nearly completed The Goliath Bone when he died and Collins finished the book's remaining chapter based on Spillane's notes. The Goliath Bone is a page turner. It's a lot of other things, too. It's Mike Hammer's last adventure (but only chronologically, there will be a few additional posthumous entries, but set in an earlier time-frame), and it's a gripping adventure. Fans of the classic Mike Hammer novels shouldn't miss this one.

Set in New York shortly after 9-11, Hammer stumbles across a robbery attempt and intervenes. The two victims are college students recently returned from an archeological dig in the Valley of Elah where they had unearthed a gigantic femur that may have belonged to the biblical giant Goliath. That's the premise, and naturally it involves al-Qaeda. The post 9-11 scenario blends seamlessly into Hammer's world, but lends the book an eerie quality. The timeliness is refreshing, and so is Mike Hammer's (and Spillane's) unabashed and uncensored references to certain cultural entities. It's not politically correct, nor should it be.

My concern is that The Goliath Bone will be given scant attention by fans or critics. Collins has done right by his friend and this collaboration has produced a classic, final Mike Hammer adventure. The ending is vintage Spillane all the way, and there's no doubt that Collins took great care in crafting those final pages from Spillane's notes. Collins is a superb writer, but underrated and under-appreciated. Long time fans will be moved by the analogous connection to a case early in Hammer's career.

On my paperback copy of the first Mike Hammer novel, I, The Jury, Spillane once wrote to me in black ink, "Tom, this goes way back! Mickey Spillane." And so it does. Spillane, like his fictional counterpart, was a tough guy to the end. The Goliath Bone is a fitting .45 caliber send off.

Portions of this essay originally appeared in "Mystery News" in 1999 and in a review of The Goliath Bone in 2008.