The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2 Read online

  The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2

  Spillane, Mickey

  NAL Trade (2001)

  Rating: ★★★★☆

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  From Publishers Weekly

  Close on the heels of Volume 1 (Forecasts, May 14), The Mike Hammer Collection: Volume 2 collects another three Mickey Spillane novels: One Lonely Night, The Big Kill and Kiss Me, Deadly. Introduced by multiple Shamus- and Edgar-winner Lawrence Block, the collection features Spillane at his finest (i.e., most vulgar, wise-talking, cynical, noir; most B-movie-poetic, etc.). The first story begins, "Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this." Except, of course, our friend Mr. Hammer; readers will feel compelled to follow.

  Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

  Product Description

  "There's a kind of power about Mickey Spillane that no other writer can imitate." (_The New York Times_)

  Apparently. With his trend-setting Mike Hammer detective novels, Mickey Spillane shot to superstardom as one of the most notorious bestselling sensations in publishing history. This powerhouse collection includes three of the master's long-out-of-print greatest novels-together for the first time in one explosive volume:

  The Big Kill

  One Lonely Night

  Kiss Me, Deadly

  Includes a special introduction by Shamus and Edgar Award-winner Lawrence Block.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  ONE LONELY NIGHT

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  THE BIG KILL

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  KISS ME, DEADLY

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  About the Author

  “MICKEY SPILLANE IS THE LIVING MASTER

  OF THE HARD-BOILED MYSTERY.”

  —Detecting Men

  I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone. I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel ... and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling.

  One Lonely Night

  Mike Hammer’s on the prowl for international thugs, on the

  lookout for military secrets, and on the make with a treacherous

  society doll too tempting for her own good.

  The Big Kill

  Mike Hammer slugs it out with a two-timing still luscious

  ex-Hollywood starlet who’s using everything she’s got to block the

  trail of a vicious killer.

  Kiss Me, Deadly

  She was desperate, terrified, and out of her mind. Now she’s dead.

  Acting as an avenging angel, Mike Hammer heads into an

  underground urban nightmare.

  Also available:

  The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 1, featuring:

  I, the Jury, My Gun Is Quick, and Vengeance Is Mine!

  Introduction by Max Allan Collins

  Mike Hammer Novels by Mickey Spillane

  I, the Jury

  My Gun Is Quick

  Vengeance Is Mine!

  One Lonely Night

  The Big Kill

  Kiss Me, Deadly

  The Girl Hunters

  The Snake

  The Twisted Thing

  The Body Lovers

  Survival ... ZERO!

  The Killing Man

  Black Alley

  New American Library

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street.

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,

  Toronto Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices .80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Previously published in Dutton editions

  One Lonely Night copyright E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1951. Copyright © renewed, Mickey Spillane. 1979

  The Big Kill copyright E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1951, Copyright © renewed Mickey Spillane, 1979.

  Kiss me, Deadly copyright E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1932, Copyright © renewed Mickey Spillane 1980.

  Introduction copyright © Lawrence Black 2001

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Spillane. Mickey, 1918-

  The Mike Hammer collection/Mickey Spillane.

  p. cm. Contents: v. 2. One lonely night-The big kill-Kiss me, deadly

  eISBN : 978-1-440-67223-1

  1.Hammer, Mike (Fictitious character-Fiction. 2. Private investigators-New York (State)- New York-Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories, American. 1. Title.

  PS 3337.P652 A5 2001.

  833 54-dc21 00-052728

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  There are works of fiction. Names, characters, plower, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of the book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.


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  Introduction

  I don’t know what the hell Mickey Spillane needs with an introduction. He certainly didn’t get one when the first Dutton hardcovers and Signet paperbacks appeared half a century ago. There were no prefatory remarks by the author, no back cover blurbs by admiring colleagues, no pithy extracts from rave reviews. (There may have been some admiring colleagues around, but as I recall, there weren’t a whole lot of rave reviews.)

  Nobody had to introduce you to Mike Hammer. You picked up a book and opened it, and he introduced himself.

  Like this, in One Lonely Night:

  Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy yellow lights off in the distance.

  Some place over there I had left my car and started walking, burying my head in the collar of my raincoat, with the night pulled in around me like a blanket. I walked and I smoked and I flipped the spent butts ahead of me and watched them arch to the pavement and fizzle out with one last wink. If there was life behind the windows of the buildings on either side of me, I didn’t notice it. The street was mine, all mine. They gave it to me gladly and wondered why I wanted it so nice and all alone.

  Or if that’s too hard to get into, try The Big Kill:

  Two drunks with a nickel between them were arguing over what to play on the juke box until a tomato in a dress that was too tight a year ago pushed the key that started off something noisy and hot. One of the drunks wanted to dance and she gave him a shove. So he danced with the other drunk.

  She saw me sitting there with my stool tipped back against the cigarette machine and change of a fin on the bar, decided I could afford a wet evening for two and walked over with her hips waving hello.

  “You’re new around here, ain’t ya?”

  “Nah. I’ve been here since six o‘clock.”

  “Buy me a drink?” She crowded in next to me, seeing how much of herself she could plaster against my legs.

  “No.” It caught her by surprise and she quit rubbing.

  “Don’t gentlemen usually buy ladies a drink?”....

  “I’m not a gentleman, kid.”

  “I ain’t a lady either so buy me a drink.”

  So I bought her a drink ...

  Here’s how he does it in Kiss Me, Deadly:

  All I saw was the dame standing there in the glare of the headlights waving her arms like a huge puppet and the curse I spit out filled the car and my own ears. I wrenched the wheel over, felt the rear end start to slide, brought it out with a splash of power and almost ran up the side of the cliff as the car fishtailed. The brakes bit in, gouging a furrow in the shoulder, then jumped to the pavement and held.

  Somehow I had managed a sweeping curve around the babe. For a few seconds she had been living on stolen time because instead of getting out of the way she had tried to stay in the beam of the headlights. I sat there and let myself shake. The butt that had fallen out of my mouth had burned a hole in the leg of my pants and I flipped it out the window. The stink of burned rubber and brake lining hung in the air like smoke and I was thinking of every damn thing I ever wanted to say to a harebrained woman so I could have it ready when I got my hands on her.

  That was as far as I got. She was there in the car beside me, the door slammed shut and she said, “Thanks, mister.”

  You see what I mean? What you want to do now is keep reading, not sit around while some clown explains why what you just read was gripping. I have to write this crap—I’m getting paid, and I have to give the people something for their money—but you don’t have to read it, and I don’t see why you would want to. Skip past these ill-chosen words of mine, shake hands with Mike Hammer, and enjoy yourself.

  Still with me, eh? Oh, well. Have it your own way.

  Hammett and Hemingway and plain-spoken, hard-boiled fiction were born in the Prohibition Era in the aftermath of the First World War. Twenty years and another war later, Mickey Spillane wrote a series of books that grabbed a new generation of readers. Spillane was a vet, and it was vets and their kid brothers who constituted his eager audience.

  Spillane’s books were different, though no one could tell you exactly how. The action was slam-bang, but that was true of pulp fiction written thirty years earlier. His hero was blunt and violent, given to taking the law into his own hands, but no more so than Carroll John Daly’s Race Williams, to mention one of many. There was sexual content, too, but it’s hard nowadays to imagine that the decorous erotic episodes in these books could have inflamed a generation of adolescent males. There were people who denounced Spillane for writing pornography, and you’ve got to wonder what they were thinking of.

  If I were an academic I could spin out a hundred thousand words in an attempt to explain what makes Spillane Spillane, but I’m not, and we can all be thankful for that. I’ll boil it all down to two words:

  Comic books.

  Before he wrote novels, Mickey Spillane wrote for the comic books. His first prose fiction consisted of a slew of one- and two-page stories for the comics, and his hero, Mike Hammer, was originally intended as a comic-strip hero. The fast cuts, the in-your-face immediacy, and the clear-cut, no-shades-of-gray, good v. evil story lines of the Mike Hammer novels come straight out of the comic-book world.

  Mickey Spillane was writing something new—comic books for grown-ups.

  The new generation of readers who embraced Spillane had read comic books before they read novels. They were used to the pace, the frame-by-frame rhythm. And they took to Mike Hammer like a duck to a pool of dark red blood shimmering in the sickly yellow light of the streetlamp ...

  Sorry. I got carried away there for a moment.

  There are a lot of Mickey Spillane stories, and everybody’s got a favorite. Here’s mine:

  Quite a few years ago, several crime novelists were invited to appear for a radio panel discussion of their craft. I wasn’t one of them, but Donald E. Westlake was, and it was he who told me the story. Whoever the panelists were, they nattered back and forth until their hour was up, and when they were off the air, Spillane said, “You know what? We never talked about money.”

  The host winced and steeled himself to explain to the creator of Mike Hammer that there was no money budgeted to pay the panelists. But that wasn’t what Mickey was getting at.

  “We didn’t talk about money,” he said, “and money’s very important. Let me give you an example. Back when we first moved down to South Carolina, I just relaxed and took it easy for a while, and every now and then it would occur to me that it would be fun to write a story. But I didn’t have any ideas. I would take long walks on the beach, I would sit and think, but I could never manage to come up with an idea.

  “Then one day I got a call from my accountant. ‘Mickey,’ he said, ‘it’s not desperate or anything, but the money’s starting to run low. It might be a good idea to generate some income.’

  “So I thanked him and hung up the phone, and bang! just like that, I started getting ideas!”

  —Lawrence Block

  Greenwich Village

  September 2001

  Lawrence Block’s novels range from the urban noir of Matthew Scudder (Everybody Dies) to the urbane effervescence of Bernie Rhodenbarr (The Burglar in the Rye). Other characters include the globe-trotting insomniac Evan Tanner (Tanner On Ice) and the introspective assassin Keller (Hit List). He has published articles and short fiction in American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, GQ, and The New York Times, and he has brought out several collections of short fiction, the most recent being his Collected Mystery Stories. Larry is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and a past president of both MWA and the Private Eye Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each and the Japan
ese Maltese Falcon award twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards. Larry and his wife, Lynne, are enthusiastic New Yorkers and relentless world travelers.

  ONE LONELY NIGHT

  To Marty

  CHAPTER 1

  Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy, yellow lights off in the distance.

  Some place over there I had left my car and started walking, burying my head in the collar of my raincoat, with the night pulled in around me like a blanket. I walked and I smoked and I flipped the spent butts ahead of me and watched them arch to the pavement and fizzle out with one last wink. If there was life behind the windows of the buildings on either side of me, I didn’t notice it. The street was mine, all mine. They gave it to me gladly and wondered why I wanted it so nice and all alone.

  There were others like me, sharing the dark and the solitude, but they huddled in the recessions of the doorways not wanting to share the wet and the cold. I could feel their eyes follow me briefly before they turned inward to their thoughts again.

  So I followed the hard concrete footpaths of the city through the towering canyons of the buildings and never noticed when the sheer cliffs of brick and masonry diminished and disappeared altogether, and the footpath led into a ramp then on to the spidery steel skeleton that was the bridge linking two states.

  I climbed to the hump in the middle and stood there leaning on the handrail with a butt in my fingers, watching the red and green lights of the boats in the river below. They winked at me and called in low, throaty notes before disappearing into the night.