I remember his Columbo ep, but I don't think I read any of his books. I did try, onetime, but I could only get to about page 10. In the book I tried to read, on every other page, the main character was punching or being punched by someone. And on every other paragraph, there was a very bad metaphor. So I had to stop reading. I couldn't take it anymore. Every rule I had ever learned in English class, was ignored by Mr. Spillane.

However, I think I do remember the first sentence of the book, even though I do not remember the title:

"She walked into the room, her hips waving a happy hello."



I looked up his bio on google a few weeks ago, and even he admitted his writing wasn't good -- well, I'll leave you all to do your own research. If nothing else, he was entertaining.

RIP Mr. Spillane

I don't mourn the passing of people who live such full and long lives -- we should all be as fortunate when it's our time, but in regard to his prowess, perhaps this IMDb excerpt sums it up best:

"Reportedly Spillane needed quick cash to buy some land for a house in 1946, so he wrote detective novel "I, The Jury" in less than a month. Although he was a professional writer, "Jury" was his first novel. It sold over three million copies and made Spillane a celebrity due to his frank combination of sex and violence. He went on to write several more novels with his main character from "Jury", hard living detective Mike Hammer. Several actors have played Hammer over the years in the movies and on television. He even portrayed Hammer himself (!) in The Girl Hunters (1963) and parodied his own image in some funny Miller Lite beer commercials in the 1970s."


That's interesting, because you'll find a "Charles Winchester" having his own brand of fun with the parody when he "Spillanes" it quite mockingly (and messy) to an insufferable "Klinger" in the closing sequence to an episode of M*A*S*H.

Of course we know it's one Hollywood writer speaking to (chiding) another through film characterization, but the fact is, it was Mickey's unorthodox style that demanded such fame and fortune, not tradition, and deep down, THAT is what insults the prose police.

I thought "Mike Hammer" was a great idea, and selecting Stacy Keach and Don Stroud to bring it to life on TV was an even smarter one. I never missed an episode.

For me this is very sad news. I am a big Mickey Spillane fan. I've read just about everything he's ever done. Sure he was a limited writer, but he never wrote a dull book.

Raymond Chandler never had a lot of time for Spillane labelling his books a mixture of violence and pornography.

Spillance never worried about any of that: "Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar," he once pronounced.

Spillane's books are good fun, and Spillane had good fun playing the real-life character of Mickey Spillane.

I thought of Spillane's writing just recently, when the newspaper printed this excerpt from this year's winner of the Bulmer-Lytton literary parody prize:

"Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean."