Murder, My Love

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Being chosen by Mickey Spillane to complete the surprising number of unfinished manuscripts he left behind is, for me, practically the definition of bittersweet. And it is definitely my greatest honor.

When I discovered Mickey’s work I was around twelve — by way of the Darren McGavin TV series — and just starting to read the great hardboiled mystery writers. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler were first, followed soon by James M. Cain. I was able to start buying Mickey’s Mike Hammer novels when I was thirteen, though I usually had to lie and pass myself off as sixteen. Spillane was thought of as writing “dirty books” back then, though many other storytellers have gone through the door he opened in a more explicit if less explosive fashion.

What remains shocking, in Spillane’s work from the ’40s through the ’90s, is the extreme, convincing and often visceral scenes of violence. Sam Peckinpah, the great and notorious director of The Wild Bunch, had white hair, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Mickey turned it that way for him, maybe with One Lonely Night, in which Mike Hammer, wielding a tommy gun, dispatches one hundred or so Commie spies.

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