The Verdict on Spillane

Contributing nicely to the veritable landslide of obituaries and encomia arising from Mickey Spillane’s death earlier this week is Steve Holland’s new Mystery*File essay, “Mickey Spillane: Hard-boiled’s Most Extreme Stylist or Cynical Exploiter of Machismo?” In it, Holland recounts the critical denunciations of The Mick’s early Mike Hammer novels (beginning with I, the Jury), provides historical context for Spillane’s stories, analyzes his attitude toward literary distinction (“I’m not an author, I’m a writer”), and looks back at the phenomenon of Spillane’s initial book sales (“[H]is first seven novels still rank in the top fifteen sellers of the past fifty years. ... He is the fifth most translated author in the world behind Lenin, Tolstoy, Gorki and Jules Verne.”) Like a skilled lawyer laying out the defense of a client, Holland doesn’t so much state his own conclusion as let the reader judge for him- or herself the merits of Spillane’s work, employing a few expert witnesses to help steer the verdict--among them, critic Anthony Boucher, who in a 1966 New York Times Book Review, wrote: “For almost twenty years I have been one of the leaders in the attacks on Spillane; but of late I begin to wonder whether we reviewers, understandably offended by Spillane’s excesses of brutality and his outrageously antidemocratic doctrines, may not have underestimated his virtues.”

’Nuff said.

ADDENDUM: Actually, there’s a wee bit more. In light of Spillane’s death, Jiro Kimura of The Gumshoe Site asks whether a much-anticipated 18th Mike Hammer novel, The Shrinking Island (“in which Hammer is supposed to marry [his secretary/partner] Velda”), will see print in the near future. Does anybody have more information about this book? If it’s unfinished, perhaps Spillane pal Max Allan Collins could take a whack at completing the story and bringing it to the reading public. Just a thought ...