The Mike Hammer Collection

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 blockbuster 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.