Before Jack Reacher . . . there was Mike Hammer

'The king of hard-boiled crime fiction' USA TODAY

Classic pulp crime fiction from an author who has sold over 200 million copies worldwide.

When Jack Williams is discovered shot dead, the investigating cop Pat Chambers calls his acquaintance, and Jack's closest friend, PI Mike Hammer. Back when they fought in the Marines together, Jack took a Japanese bayonet, losing his arm, to save Hammer. Hammer vows to identify the killer ahead of the police, and to exact fatal revenge. His starting point is the list of guests at a party at Jack's apartment the night he died: Jack's fiancee, a recovering dope addict, a beautiful psychiatrist, twin socialite sisters, a college student and a mobster.

But as he tracks them down, so too does the killer, and soon it's not only Jack who is dead . . .

And now Hammer is firmly in the killer's sights.

'[Spillane] was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in good and evil' Washington Times

About the Author
Born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn, New York City, Mickey Spillane started writing while at high school. During the Second World War, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a fighter pilot and instructor. After the war, he moved to South Carolina. He was married three times, the third time to Jane Rogers Johnson, and had four children and two stepchildren. He wrote his first novel, I, the Jury (1947), in order to raise the money to buy a house for himself and his first wife, Mary Ann Pearce. The novel sold six and a half million copies in the United States, and introduced Spillane's most famous character, the hardboiled PI Mike Hammer. The many novels that followed became instant bestsellers, until in 1980 the US all-time fiction bestseller list of fifteen titles boasted seven by Mickey Spillane. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. He was uniformly disliked by critics, owing to the high content of sex and violence in his books. However, he was later praised by American mystery writers Max Alan Collins and William L. DeAndrea, as well as artist Markus Lupertz. The novelist Ayn Rand, a friend of Spillane's, appreciated the black-and-white morality of his books. Spillane was an active Jehovah's Witness. He died in 2006.

Reviews
The king of hard-boiled crime fiction * USA TODAY *
Master of the post-war private eye potboiler * NEW YORK TIMES *
There's a kind of power about Mickey Spillane that no other writer can imitate * NEW YORK TIMES *
[Spillane] was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in good and evil' * WASHINGTON TIMES *
Mike Hammer is an icon for our culture * NEW YORK TIMES *



Book Information
ISBN 9781409158646
Author Mickey Spillane
Format Paperback
Page Count 176
Imprint Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
Publisher Orion Publishing Co
Weight(grams) 160g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 128mm * 18mm