Fresh Meat for a Publisher

Back in November, we reported that at the time of his death, Mickey Spillane left behind several novels--including two featuring private eye Mike Hammer--in various states of completion, and that his friend Max Allan Collins was prepared to finish those works for publication. One of them, a non-series work called Dead Street, will be brought out by Hard Case Crime in August. And now it looks as if the rest of those books will see print, as well.

According to Publishers Weekly,

Otto Penzler has acquired world rights to three novels by the late Mickey Spillane for his eponymous imprint at Harcourt via agent Dominic Abel. The new novels, written with occasional Spillane collaborator and fellow mystery writer Max Allan Collins, feature private eye Mike Hammer and are titled The Goliath Bone, The Big Bang and King of Weeds. Bone will be out in spring 2008. Spillane died in 2006.

Three Hammer books? When I spoke with Collins earlier, he told me about King of Weeds and The Goliath Bone. But where did The Big Bang come from, I wonder. In the mid-1960s Spillane sold a short story to Saga magazine called “The Big Bang,” but it starred a “hood” named Ryan, not Hammer.

(Hat tip to Sarah Weinman.)