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."