Mickey is probably the only detective writer who packed heat, even if it was only for a dustjack portrait

Raymond Chandler took it a step further and added a higher level of writing where the detective became a knight errant, but still dealt with people who stunk of gunpowder.

Ross Macdonald added an emotional life and classical depth to dirty little people who didn't deserve it.

So what's a former comic-book writer doing rubbing elbows with the Holy Trinity? The Mickster took the genre to its logical extreme and added a whopping dollop of sex. Instant best seller. Shoot a dame in the navel – who knows where he might have had Mike shoot her today – 'cause she killed your partner and give detective fiction a new direction: raw, violent, and mean. Mike Hammer was a ruthless as those he faught. He had to become the monsters he needed to defeat.

Mike started life as a comic book detective – Mike Danger – back in the days when EC comics routinely had covers of zombies with axes buried in the heads. Mike Danger didn't get picked up.

So why waste the effort? Spillane filled out the manuscript, filed off the "Danger" and painted over "Hammer." Mike caught on with the public and more than a hundred million copies of his rough-and-tough exploits were sold.

That's not to say that Spillane couldn't turn a phrase. One of his most memorable, for me, was when Mike attended a Dirty Red Commie meeting: "The room was full of long-haired men and short-haired women." That was in the days when it meant something.