Writers Born Today - Mickey Spillane Born 100 Years Ago

It's the 100th anniversary of the birth of Frank Morrison Spillane, born March 9, 1918 in Brooklyn. The creator of Mike Hammer, his writing had a huge impact in the publishing world. Readers loved his novels, but critics despised them.

Spillane's father, an Irish bartender, gave him the nickname "Mickey". He developed a knack for story telling...it helped him avoid beatings by older kids in his tough neighborhood. By the end of high school, he had sold his first story to a pulp magazine. After some college he got a job writing comics. World War II interrupted his literary pursuits and with scant success in the comic trade, Spillane turned to writing novels using Mike Danger, a P.I. hero he created for the comics. He renamed the character Mike Hammer, and churned out the first novel with this hero in just three weeks. The publisher, E.P. Dutton, didn't think much of the writing, but bought it anyway, in part as a favor to Spillane's agent. It would change how people thought of the detective novel.

I, The Jury sold a respectable 10,000 copies in hardcover, but when released in paperback, sales exploded, literally. Over a million copies were sold, and Spillane churned out half a dozen more novels in the next few years featuring his hard hitting and often brutal hero. Spillane's timing was perfect. Paperbacks were cheap and fed the public's postwar demand for action and adventure filled stories.

Literary gems they were not. A new Mike Hammer novel brought enormous sales, but also scathing reviews from book critics. Anthony Boucher in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote of I, The Jury ,"so vicious a glorification of force, cruelty and extra-legal methods that the novel might be made required reading in a Gestapo training school."  The Saturday Review of Literature was more succinct. "Lurid action, lurid characters, lurid writing, lurid plot, lurid finish. Verdict: Lurid"

But Spillane didn't let the bad reviews bother him. "I don't give a hoot about readin' reviews. What I want to read is the royalty checks," he said. And the checks poured in, not just from print, but from television, radio and movie rights. One of the most successful screen adaptations was the movie Kiss Me Deadly, which starred Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer.

Spillane created other protaganists, including spies Tiger Mann and Mako Hooker. He even wrote a few children's books and won a Junior Literary Guild award for one of them, The Day The Sea Rolled Back. In real life, Spillane bore little resemblance to his hard as nails characters. He was a Jehovah's Witness, and neither drank nor smoked.

By the time he returned to writing Mike Hammer novels in the 60s, his literary reputation was improving. In 1995, the Mystery Writers of America gave him their Grand Master, the highest award in the mystery field in recognition of his lifetime achievements as a writer.

To date, his novels have sold over 200 million copies.

"Mike Hammer drinks beer because I can't spell Cognac."

- Mickey Spillane

Writers Born Today - John Dickson Carr

It's the birthday of John Dickson Carr, born November 30, 1906 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He devoured mystery, supernatural, and horror stories while growing up amid the coal mines of western PA.  He began writing stories while still in college, and eventually went to Paris to write (although his parents thought he was continuing his studies).

He published his first whodunit in 1930, It Walks By Night. But it wasn't until he went to England that he really hit his stride as a mystery writer. He wrote during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, and became a master of the locked room mystery. His most famous work in this sub-genre is The Hollow Man, published in 1935. It's considered by most to be the greatest locked room mystery of all time. He delighted in creating a spooky atmosphere in his novels, although his endings almost always has a rational explanation.

His work drew inspiration from some of the pioneers of mystery fiction such as Gaston Leroux and G. K. Chesterton. He had many admirers among his fellow writers. Dorothy L. Sayers said of his work, "Every sentence gives a thrill of positive pleasure."

He wrote under several pen names in addition to his own, including Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn. In 1950 he began writing historical stories and The Bride of Newgate, set in 1815 England, was one of the first historical mysteries ever written. Anthony Boucher included this in his list of the Best Dozen Novels of 1950.

Carr was honored on three separate occasions by the Mystery Writers of America. He won his first Edgar Award in 1950 for his biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1963 he was awarded the Grand Master Award. His final Edgar came in 1970 in recognition of his forty year career as a mystery writer.

You can read or download a partial pdf copy of The Hollow Man here.

"Let there be a spice of terror, of dark skies and evil things."

                              - John Dickson Carr

Writers Born Today - Donald Westlake

It's the birthday of Donald Westlake, born July 12, 1933 in Brooklyn.

He started writing in his teens. While working as an usher in a movie theater he would invent different endings for the films in his head. His parents saw him as an architect but he saw himself as a writer.

So he wrote. And collected dozens of rejections. He must have had a tough skin because he kept writing. After 200 rejections his first story was published in a science fiction magazine.

He wrote some more. Along the way he created one of the toughest character in crime fiction, a professional criminal named Parker. Yet Westlake didn't anticipate Parker becoming a series. As Westlake stated "When Bucklyn Moon of Pocket Books said he wanted to publish The Hunter, if I’d help Parker escape the law at the end so I could write more books about him, I was at first very surprised. He was the bad guy in the book."

Eventually, two dozen Parker novels were published.

In addition to his own name, Westlake produced stories and novels using 17 pseudonyms (including a female name, Barbara Wilson). Sometimes his pen names appeared in his fiction as characters. Westlake had a great sense of humor and he used it often in his writing. His most famous pen name was Richard Stark, used to create the Parker novels.

More than a dozen films have been made from his work, starring some of Hollywood's biggest stars. Director Quentin Tarantino has mentioned Westlake's fictional anti-hero Parker as an influence on his films, particularly Reservoir Dogs.

Westlake's screenplay for The Grifters was nominated for an Academy Award, and won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. It was his third Edgar award.  In 1993, MWA made him a Grand Master.

He never made the new York Times best-seller list, but his influence in crime fiction cannot be overstated. Stephen King dedicated his novel Joyland to him. One writer even named his son after one of Westlake's characters...Parker.