The Mike Hammer Collection - Mickey Spillane [1]
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Published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group
(USA) Inc. Previously published individually in Signet and Dutton editions.
First Obsidian Printing, October 2010
The Girl Hunters copyright © Mickey Spillane, 1962
The Snake copyright © Mickey Spillane, 1964
The Twisted Thing copyright © Mickey Spillane, 1966
Introduction copyright © Max Allan Collins, 2010
All rights reserved
OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Spillane, Mickey, 1918-2006.
The Mike Hammer collection, volume 3/Mickey Spillane.
p. cm.—(An Obsidian mystery)
eISBN : 978-1-101-46446-5
1. Hammer, Mike (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3537.P652A6 2010
813’.54—dc22
2010022362
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The Return of Mike Hammer
Among aficionados of tough crime fiction, few literary mysteries rival that of the disappearance in 1952 of fictional private eye Mike Hammer at the peak of his—and his creator Mickey Spillane’s—powers.
The still-unrivaled publishing success of this Brooklyn-born bartender’s son began inauspiciously in 1947 with the hardcover publication by E. P. Dutton of I, the Jury. A few reviewers noticed it as a particularly nasty example of hard-boiled detective fiction, a few praised it, most panned it, and sales were less than ten thousand copies. There was such little notice taken of Mike Hammer’s first adventure that when the young writer submitted a second Hammer novel, For Whom the Gods Would Destroy, Dutton rejected it. Spillane returned to the comic book field where, among other things, he wrote love comics.
Then, in December 1948, New American Library’s paperback edition of I, the Jury came out and started selling—and selling. In part thanks to a vivid cover portraying the now-famous denouement of the novel—a seated Mike Hammer’s back to the camera as he trains his .45 on a disrobing femme fatale—the book attracted legions of readers. Spillane was asked to resubmit For Whom the Gods Would Destroy, which he declined to do (more on that subject later), and instead My Gun Is Quick appeared in 1950, the second of six Hammer novels that would top bestseller lists worldwide,