The Mike Hammer Collection

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

And judge. And executioner. Introducing private detective Mike
Hammer in the book that launched homicide's hottest hero.

 

Mike Hammer couldn't take his eyes off the bombshell sitting at the
bar. No man could. But which one snuffed her out?

 

Is she really an innocent blond model? Or is she just posing? Nothing
that looks that good could be that innocent.

 

Coming in Fall 2001:

 

The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2,
featuring:
One Lonely Night, The Big Kill, and Kiss Me, Deadly
Introduction by Lawrence Block

Mike Hammer Novels by Mickey Spillane

New American Library
Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Previously published in separate Dutton editions.

First New American Library Printing, June 2001

I, the Jury
copyright E.P Dutton & Co., Inc., 1947

Copyright © renewed Mickey Spillane, 1975
My Gun Is Quick
copyright E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1950
Copyright © renewed Mickey Spillane, 1978
Vengeance Is Mine!
copyright E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1950
Copyright © renewed, Mickey Spillane, 1978
Introduction © Max Allan Collins, 2001
All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATIONS DATA:

 

Spillane,
Mickey,
1918—
The Mike Hammer collection / Mickey Spillane.
p. cm.
Contents: v. 1. I, the jury—My gun is quick—Vengeance is mine

eISBN : 978-1-440-67410-5

1. Hammer, Mike (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—New York (State)—
New York—Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories, American. I. Title.
PS3537.P652 A6 2001
813'.54—dc21 00-052728

 

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE
These are works 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 assume any responsibility for
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Mickey Spillane: This Time It's Personal

I
f you have never read a Mike Hammer novel before, how I envy you. You are about to take the definitive wild ride of American mystery fiction, and will meet the most famous tough private eye of them all—Mike Hammer—not in a watered-down movie or TV show rendition, but via the gritty, mind-boggling real thing: the unmistakable, electrifying prose of Mickey Spillane.

And—if you have read these novels before, perhaps a long, long time ago—you may be surprised to discover that Spillane isn't just the remarkable entertainer you remember, but a distinctive literary stylist ... if not an “author” (a word he despises, always reminding us that he is a “writer,” and proud to be one), that his work nonetheless belongs on the same short shelf as that of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

I'll give you the literary lowdown a few pages from now and make the “case” for Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer as more than a mere entertainer and the pop-culture phenomenon he created. First, I want to get personal—and that's fitting, because at the core of Spillane's success is the personal nature of his storytelling. Mike Hammer is always motivated not by a client who walks in the door, but the murder of a friend. He is a detective, yes, and a much better one than he is ever given credit for; but he is, first and last, an avenger.

Something personal is at stake at the heart of every Spillane novel, particularly the Mike Hammers. And Hammer himself is (as Spillane has frequently said) “a state of mind;” with only the barest references to physical description—Hammer is “big,” he's “ugly”—Spillane presents a character so vivid, whose voice is so readily identifiable, that for five decades filmmakers have been frustrated to recreate this famous character satisfactorily on the screen. It's
I
,
the Jury,
after all—emphasis on the “I.” With Hammer's idiosyncratic yet natural voice, Spillane merges his hero's mind with the reader's in a manner that makes a Hammer yarn both immediate and intimate. And like the early Beatles, Spillane knew that using first-person pronouns in his titles would emphasize the personal nature of his hero's quest.

I started reading Mickey's Mike Hammer novels when I was thirteen—and that's the age I revert to whenever I read a Spillane novel. How vividly I recall encountering the clerk behind the counter of some drugstore in some town along a family vacation route, circa 1960, when I wanted to buy the Mike Hammer paperback One Lonely Night.

“Are you old enough to be reading this?” the clerk asked, eyeing the naked, trussed-up dame on the cover.

“I'm sixteen,” I lied.

And the guy shrugged and took my thirty-five cents. That, and my sanity, was all it cost me to become a Mike Hammer fan for life.

I had already read Hammett and Chandler, and Spillane seemed to me then their peer. I still feel that way today—and it still gets me into trouble. For over four decades now, I have found myself in the unlikely position of being perhaps the chief defender of one of the most popular writers of all time. Because of my boldly expressed high opinion of Mickey Spillane, I have been involved in screaming matches; I have nearly been in several fistfights; and I have been dissed and dismissed because of the taint of Spillane on my own work. As beloved as Spillane is—and no other mystery writer has touched readers in so deeply personal a manner—so in some quarters is he roundly despised.

And yet Mickey Spillane—born in Brooklyn on March 9, 1918—is undeniably one of the most influential writers of twentieth-century mystery fiction. And after fifty years of critical pummeling, he is now ... finally ... widely acknowledged as the master of the post-World War II hard-boiled private-eye novel.

The 1948 Signet reprint of his 1947 E.P. Dutton hardcover,
I,
the Jury, sold in the millions, as did the six tough mysteries (all but one a Hammer) that soon followed. A veteran of World War II, Spillane connected with other returning GIs by providing entertainment that in its violence and carnality reflected a generation's loss of innocence; but Spillane was also a veteran of comic book writing, and he delivered these tales in a viscerat, visually hard-hitting, direct manner.

Spillane's impact on the mass-market paperback industry was immediate and long lasting, his success soon imitated by countless authors and publishers. Gold Medal Books, America's pioneer “paperback original” house, was specifically formed to tap into the Spillane market. The new level of violence and sex found in Spillane's fiction influenced not only other mystery writers, but virtually every branch of popular storytelling. His detective Mike Hammer provided the template for James Bond, Dirty Harry, Billy Jack, Rambo, John Shaft, and countless other fictional tough guys.