One Lonely Night - Mickey Spillane

‘I wish there was a special agency called Death that could hear what I was thinking and make a try for me. I’d like to take that stinking black shadow and shove his own scythe down his bony throat and disjoint him with a couple of .45s?’

Something I picked up the other day. Spillane wrote his first novel, ‘I, The Jury’(1947), in nineteen days. It sold six-and-a-half million copies (hardcover and paperback). By 1980 he’d written 7 of the top 15 all-time best-selling novels in the U.S. Even his stats are hardboiled. The writer as literary gangster, smashing his way into the writing racket and ruling it, spitting out words likes bullets from a .50 BMG – 450pm, drilling holes in critics, slugging members of the Shakespeare Squad – he made Papa H look like P.G. Wodehouse. I know a guy who’s only read one novel, and that was ‘My Gun Is Quick’. The nemesis of liberals, no time for depth of character, subtle nuances, or the niceties of political reason, he was an atomic author, a wham-bam wordsmith – the all-American way – get rich quick and to hell with everyone, especially the critics.

My 'Kiss Me Deadly' mix is now available as a download.