The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  THE GIRL HUNTERS

  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

  THE SNAKE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  THET WISTED THING

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  About the Author

  “I write what people want to read.”

  —Mickey Spillane

  The muzzle of the gun was a pair of yawning chasms but there was no depth to their mouths. Down the length of the blued steel the blood crimson of her nails made a startling and symbolic contrast.

  Death red, I thought. The fingers behind them should have been tan but weren’t. They were a tense, drawing white and with another fraction of an inch the machinery of the gun would go into motion.

  The Girl Hunters

  Mike Hammer’s voluptuous, long-lost love is alive—and targeted by the mastermind assassin known as The Dragon.

  The Snake

  Playing protector to a runaway baby-faced blonde, Mike Hammer trades barbs and lead with crooked politicos, snarling hoods, and sex-hungry females.

  The Twisted Thing

  A kidnapping case leads Mike Hammer into a fourteen-year-old mystery and into the sights of the most venomous killer the twofisted private eye has ever faced.

  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

  The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2, featuring:

  One Lonely Night, The Big Kill, and Kiss Me, Deadly

  Introduction by Lawrence Block

  Praise for Mickey Spillane

  “Spillane is a master in compelling you to always turn the next page.”

  —The New York Times

  “The toughest guy in all of mystery fiction.... In books like I, the Jury, One Lonely Night, and Kiss Me, Deadly, Spillane secured a permanent place for himself in the pantheon of such mystery greats as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Is there any serious argument that Mike Hammer is the most famous fictional detective creation since the Second World War?”

  —Donald Westlake

  “One of the bestselling authors of the twentieth century. . . . With Hammer, Spillane secured his place in the pantheon, alongside such mystery greats as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “[A] crime-writing legend.”

  —New York Post

  “There is not a single emotional word or adjective in Spillane’s description ; he presents nothing save visual facts; but he selects only those facts, only those eloquent details, which convey the visual reality of the scene and create a mood of desolate loneliness.”

  —Ayn Rand

  “I find [Spillane’s] early novels hugely entertaining in their meat-and-potatoes way. They go like lightning, they keep you guessing, and they don’t pretend to be anything other than ripping yarns.”

  —National Review

  “There are only a handful of towering figures in the history of the private-eye novel, which is one of the quintessential American contributions to the world of twentieth-century literature. Dashiell Hammett popularized the genre; Raymond Chandler was its greatest literary artist ; Mr. Spillane kept it alive when it fell out of favor.”

  —The New York Sun

  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

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  Published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group

  (USA) Inc. Previously published individually in Signet and Dutton editions.

  First Obsidian Printing, October 2010

  The Girl Hunters copyright © Mickey Spillane, 1962

  The Snake copyright © Mickey Spillane, 1964

  The Twisted Thing copyright © Mickey Spillane, 1966

  Introduction copyright © Max Allan Collins, 2010

  All rights reserved

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Spillane, Mickey, 1918-2006.

  The Mike Hammer collection, volume 3/Mickey Spillane.

  p. cm.—(An Obsidian mystery)

  eISBN : 978-1-101-46446-5

  1. Hammer, Mike (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3537.P652A6 2010

  813’.54—dc22

  2010022362

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this 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

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, 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 ass
ume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  The Return of Mike Hammer

  Among aficionados of tough crime fiction, few literary mysteries rival that of the disappearance in 1952 of fictional private eye Mike Hammer at the peak of his—and his creator Mickey Spillane’s—powers.

  The still-unrivaled publishing success of this Brooklyn-born bartender’s son began inauspiciously in 1947 with the hardcover publication by E. P. Dutton of I, the Jury. A few reviewers noticed it as a particularly nasty example of hard-boiled detective fiction, a few praised it, most panned it, and sales were less than ten thousand copies. There was such little notice taken of Mike Hammer’s first adventure that when the young writer submitted a second Hammer novel, For Whom the Gods Would Destroy, Dutton rejected it. Spillane returned to the comic book field where, among other things, he wrote love comics.

  Then, in December 1948, New American Library’s paperback edition of I, the Jury came out and started selling—and selling. In part thanks to a vivid cover portraying the now-famous denouement of the novel—a seated Mike Hammer’s back to the camera as he trains his .45 on a disrobing femme fatale—the book attracted legions of readers. Spillane was asked to resubmit For Whom the Gods Would Destroy, which he declined to do (more on that subject later), and instead My Gun Is Quick appeared in 1950, the second of six Hammer novels that would top bestseller lists worldwide, making Spillane the first pop-lit superstar—so big, it well and truly pissed off Ernest Hemingway, who asked to have Spillane’s picture removed from a barroom wall in Florida and got his own taken down for the trouble.

  Sixty years later, to describe the impact of those six novels—and a seventh non-Hammer Spillane, The Long Wait—is to tempt credulity. The millions of copies the blue-collar writer sold unveiled an audience for franker, more violent popular fiction, and the mystery field in particular was riddled with his imitators. This went beyond just other writers copying Spillane—the first major publisher of paperback original fiction, Gold Medal Books, was created in 1950 to serve the market Spillane had uncovered. He was even their paid consultant, and provided a memorable blurb for one of their mainstays, John D. MacDonald (“I wish I had written this book!”). Gold Medal’s major Hammer imitation was the Shell Scott series by Richard S. Prather, zany comedies that nonetheless worked in the extreme violence and sex Spillane had first trafficked.

  The sixth Hammer novel, Kiss Me, Deadly (1952), became the first private eye novel to crack the New York Times bestseller list (the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner had never come close), and the paperback edition was as wildly successful as its predecessors. Hollywood, via British producer/director Victor Saville, came calling, and the new Spillane book and three others were headed for the silver screen.

  In the midst of success and celebrity that the young writer could never have imagined came a similarly shocking barrage of attacks. Though often characterized as a right-wing writer, Spillane was—like Dashiell Hammett (but not serving jail time!)—a victim of the McCarthy era. The former comic book writer found himself (alone among popular fiction practitioners) caught up in a four-color witch hunt that started with well-meaning but misguided psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham and ended with a farcical Senate hearing. Wertham’s anticomics book Seduction of the Innocent (1954) detailed example after example of rampant violence, sexually suggestive content, and latent homosexuality in the superhero, crime, and horror “funnies” of the fifties. He singled out only one popular fiction author: Mickey Spillane.

  Wertham was not alone in going after Spillane hammer and tongs—diatribes in countless publications from The Atlantic to Parents magazine attacked Spillane as a purveyor of filth, the nadir of popular culture, and the illegitimate father of juvenile delinquency. In public, and even in private, Spillane laughed all this off. But he was secretly troubled and frustrated that what he had conceived as sheer entertainment would be taken so seriously, and that he had become a kind of household-name villain, a synonym for sex and sadism.

  How much effect this had on Spillane’s decision to stop writing Mike Hammer novels after his sixth one is unknown. I spoke to him about this many times, and got many answers (some elliptical, others disingenuous), and have come to feel there’s no one solution to the mystery.

  Similarly, it’s hard to know whether Spillane’s conversion to the conservative religious sect the Jehovah’s Witnesses was in part a response to this over-the-top criticism. Did Spillane feel guilty, and were the Witnesses his redemption? He never said. He rarely spoke about his religious beliefs in public, and in private said only that he’d responded to what he’d been told by a couple of Watchtower-dispensing missionaries who came to his door in typical Witness fashion.

  What can’t be denied is the problem created by his conservative faith for the hard-hitting, sexually provocative fiction for which he’d become rich and famous. Throughout his career, Spillane would alternate prolific periods with fallow ones, going in and out of the church, taking criticism from his fellow Witnesses as late as The Killing Man (1989), when he was nearly sent packing from his South Carolina Kingdom Hall over the use of profanity.

  The criticism he received, whether from the New York Times or his church, was surely not the only factor for his seeming dry spell from 1952-1961. Spillane liked to say he wrote only when he needed the money, and in the 1950s, money was pouring in—he was the bestselling writer in the world, and Hollywood was adding to the coffers, as well, though in ways that frustrated him.

  He spent a lot of time dueling with producer Saville, who rejected Spillane’s choice to play Mike Hammer, ex-Marine and cop Jack Stang. Spillane, playing himself, and Stang, essentially as Hammer, starred for producers John Wayne and Bob Fellows in the circus thriller Ring of Fear (1954). Stang, though physically impressive, didn’t make the impact onscreen that natural actor Spillane did—the author was clearly the Mike Hammer audiences had been expecting when Saville instead gave them Biff Elliot in I, the Jury.

  Throughout the fifties, the absence of a new Hammer mystery did not keep the first six books from selling and selling, although finally NAL did develop a sort of fill-in, a British author named Fleming said to be the Spillane of the UK. Spillane was having the time of his life, touring with the Clyde Beatty Circus, racing stock cars, and fiddling with Hollywood projects. Saville made three more Spillane films, notably the classic Kiss Me Deadly (1955), directed by Robert Aldrich and with a nicely nasty Hammer in Ralph Meeker. A good, tough TV series starring Darren McGavin ran for two syndicated seasons in the late fifties; there was a radio show and, for a while, even a Hammer comic strip, with Spillane himself writing the Sunday stories.

  During his bookless near decade, Spillane did keep his hand in the business—he wrote non-Hammer short stories and novellas for surprisingly low-end markets, usually dealing with editors and publishers he knew from his comic book days. The most successful writer in the world was selling his once- or twice-a-year short fiction to lower-tier publications such as Cavalier, Male, Saga, and Manhunt.

  He stayed in contact with his book publishers, however, and may have been angling for an improved contract before getting back to work. He was notoriously casual about the business end of things, despite his workingman’s pride in his craft, and made a number of bad decisions toward the start of his run of success that he spent much of his life trying to correct. He may have been on a kind of informal strike with Dutton and Signet.

  Whatever the case, his return in 1960 with the non-Hammer novel The Deep earned him mixed reviews (actually a big step up) and the expected blockb
uster sales, particularly in paperback. But readers and reviewers alike were asking the same question: Where is Mike Hammer?

  This collection answers that question, beginning with the novel that signaled the end of the long wait between Hammer books—The Girl Hunters (1961). Few Hammer fans would rate any of the later novels above the initial very famous six (I, The Jury; My Gun Is Quick; Vengeance is Mine!; One Lonely Night; The Big Kill; Kiss Me, Deadly). Most, however, would place The Girl Hunters next on that esteemed list.

  Spillane is seldom credited with the innovative brand of continuity he developed in the Hammer series. Most mystery series have interchangeable parts—only the first and last of Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels have any real sense of continuity; Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe remain ageless as Rex Stout indicates the changing times around them; and—once Erle Stanley Gardner got his cast and format in place—Perry Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake span four decades or more behaving exactly the same.

  Spillane, however, explored the impact of events on his character, so that the shocking conclusion of I, the Jury haunts the detective, with his guilt coming to a head in the fourth Hammer book, the surreal nightmare One Lonely Night. Even in 1961’s The Girl Hunters , Hammer cops to feeling guilty over the “easy” decision he made on the last page of his 1947 debut novel.

  The Girl Hunters answers the question of Hammer’s disappearance, literally—the detective, guilt-ridden for causing the seeming death of his partner-secretary, Velda, has been on a seven-year drunk, as evidenced by the famous first line: “They found me in the gutter.” Further, Spillane reveals that Hammer’s best friend, Captain Pat Chambers of homicide, is now his worst enemy, as Chambers too is revealed to have been in love with Velda. When word comes that Velda may be alive, Hammer the alcoholic goes cold turkey (well, beers don’t count, apparently) and soon is back on the mean streets.