“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. 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.”

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The Big Kill

by Mickey Spillane (1951)

It started with a kid, of all things. Rock hard private detective Mike Hammer thought he would just take a load off for a bit. Looking for a respite from the darkness, from the dangerous world he found himself in every day and night, Mike stops in for a drink. But wouldn’t you know it? Trouble wouldn’t let him alone. And it was a kid. Of all things. William Decker was an ex-con gone bad and he looked it. That is what made the infant look so out of place in his arms, and in a bar, to boot. Adding to the strange tableau is the fact that Decker is crying. But in they come, Decker and the kid. And then he was gone. Leaving the child behind, Decker walks out of the bar and back into the driving rain. Everyone heard the shot and Mike is out on the sidewalk in an instant. Decker lay on the sidewalk bleeding out and Hammer quickly shoots the assailant, leaving him writhing on the street. As Decker dies, Hammer hopes to question the shooter but he is promptly run over and silenced. Hammer takes charge of the child and vows to get to the bottom of this nefarious deed.

After getting someone to look after the kid while he hits the streets, Mike meets with police chief and friend Pat Chambers who tells Mike that Decker had pulled a robbery just before he was killed. Hammer canvasses Decker’s neighbours and friends and learns that Decker was going straight, inspired in part by his desire to see that the kid had a chance at a decent future. Mike’s trail of vengeance leads him to amorous encounters with two women and more violent run-ins with his harried police chief buddy, the district attorney and his stooges and lowlife gangsters.

Frank Morrison Spillane was born in Brooklyn – natch – in 1918. He started writing in high school and worked for a time for Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey as a trampoline artist before enlisting in the Army Air Corps during World War 2. Mickey then began as a writer of comic books before marrying. To raise money to buy a house, Mickey thought he’d write a novel and so he did, knocking out his first, I, the Jury, in 9 – count ‘em – 9 days. I, the Jury put Spillane on the map, selling some 6 and a half million copies and introducing to the world his enduring character Mike Hammer. Setting himself somewhat apart from other hardboiled detectives, Hammer was as his name suggests the archetypal “hard man”; brutally violent and fuelled by a genuine hate of violent crime. Hammer was the hero of many of Spillane’s best-known novels including The Big Kill, Kiss Me Deadly and The Girl Hunters.

Through the viscous nature of his stories and the audaciously sexy book covers for his work, Spillane became a hero of literature and eventually of popular culture. He became a hero of film as well particularly with the movie version of Kiss Me Deadly, a legendary 1955 film noir that starred Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer and one that was a stylistic precursor to scores of films influenced by it and its bombastic finale. Mickey later made history when he himself portrayed his own literary character in 1963’s The Girl Hunters, made in England and co-starring dishy Shirley Eaton. Additionally, years ago I stumbled on the excellent 1970 film The Delta Factor starring Christopher George and Yvette Mimieux that was based on Mickey’s 1967 novel that featured another character, Morgan the Raider.

A new generation became aware of Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer with the success of televisions Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer starring Stacy Keach that ran from 1984 to 1987. A show with the same title had aired for two seasons in the late 1950s.

Spillane was married three times and had six children. He died of pancreatic cancer at his home in South Carolina in 2006. He made it to 88.

The Big Kill is a brisk enjoyable read as are the other 12 Mike Hammer novels. Understanding Mickey Spillane and his work is essential to us Vintage Leisure types and his books should sit on our shelves alongside the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and I’ll throw Louis L’Amour in there. He is one of the few writers who have transcended their images and even their own works and who have grown to become symbolic of a certain type of literature and a certain type of story. They have created and inhabit their own universe. Mickey Spillane is part of a rare breed and he has become a genre unto himself.