Mickey Spillane

March 9, 1918 — Brooklyn, New York, USA

Mickey Spillane is an American author of hardcore detective stories. Wrote more than 20 novels with a circulation of more than 140 million copies. He began his writing career as a writer for comics. Spillane published his first novel, Judgment Is Me, in 1946. The hero of this and twelve other books is private detective Mike Hammer, one of the most popular characters in popular culture. Spillane's novels have been adapted many times in film and television. Spillane himself played the role of a detective in the movie (Ring of Fear / Ring of Fear, 1954). Films based on his novels became classics, including Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and The Girl Hunters (1963), with his own participation. In The Girl Hunters, Spillane played his character Mike Hammer. This is one of the rarest cases in history when the author plays the role of the hero he created. He also appeared as a writer in the television series about Colombo (episode "Publish or Perish"). Spillane's huge success is usually credited to the successful mixture of his gruff language, the rigidity of the characters, and the abundance of erotic scenes. His books, as fellow detective writer Raymond Chandler has said, can be described as "a mixture of violence and outright pornography." However, they have become a classic of the genre.