The Mike Hammer Collection Volume 1 Spillane, Mickey Collins, Max Allan NAL Trade (2001) Rating: ☆ ★★★★ From Publishers Weekly Mickey Spillane's first three Mike Hammer mysteries I, the Jury; My Gun Is Quick; and Vengeance Is Mine! are collected in The Mike Hammer Collection: Volume 1, with an introduction by Shamus Award-winner Max Allan Collins, who finds "[s]omething personal...at the heart of every Spillane novel." Hammer is a foul-mouthed, violent vigilante and a sucker for beautiful damsels in distress, some of whom pull the wool over his eyes. With his trusty, sexy assistant Velda keeping him honest (sort of), he exacts revenge on racketeers, cheats and murderers. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Product Description SEX AND VIOLENCE. Mickey Spillane, the tough-as-nails, bestselling publishing phenomenon knew what readers wanted. Now he's really letting them have it...times three. MIKE HAMMER-Spillane's ultimate creation, the original no-holds-barred private eye who became homicide's hottest anti-hero. THE MIKE HAMMER COLLECTION, VOLUME 1-the first-ever trade anthology of Spillane's masterpieces of literary mayhem. In one exciting collection, here are the first three novels featuring legendary detective Mike Hammer. I, the Jury My Gun is Quick Vengeance is Mine! Mickey Spillane is a master. (_The New York Times_) Mickey Spillane is the living master of the hard-boiled mystery. (_Detecting Men_) Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page I, - THE JURY CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 MY GUN IS QUICK CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 VENGEANCE IS MINE! CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 About the Author She twisted away and there was a loud whispering of cloth and the gown came away in my hands. She went staggering across the room stark naked except for the high-heel shoes and sheer stockings. She rammed an end table, her hands reaching for the drawer, and she got it open far enough for me to see the gun she was trying to get at. I had mine out first. This is Mickey Spillane. I, the Jury And judge. And executioner. Introducing private detective Mike Hammer in the book that launched homicide’s hottest hero. My Gun Is Quick Mike Hammer couldn’t take his eyes off the bombshell sitting at the bar. No man could. But which one snuffed her out? Vengeance Is Mine! Is she really an innocent blond model? Or is she just posing? Nothing that looks that good could be that innocent. Coming in Fall 2001: The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2, featuring: One Lonely Night, The Big Kill, and Kiss Me, Deadly Introduction by Lawrence Block Mike Hammer Novels by Mickey Spillane I, the Jury My Gun Is Quick Vengeance Is Mine! One Lonely Night The Big Kill Kiss Me, Deadly The Girl Hunters The Snake The Twisted Thing The Body Lovers Survival ... ZERO! The Killing Man Black Alley New American Library Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in separate Dutton editions. First New American Library Printing, June 2001 I, the Jury copyright E.P Dutton & Co., Inc., 1947 Copyright © renewed Mickey Spillane, 1975 My Gun Is Quick copyright E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1950 Copyright © renewed Mickey Spillane, 1978 Vengeance Is Mine! copyright E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1950 Copyright © renewed, Mickey Spillane, 1978 Introduction © Max Allan Collins, 2001 All rights reserved REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATIONS DATA: Spillane, Mickey, 1918— The Mike Hammer collection / Mickey Spillane. p. cm. Contents: v. 1. I, the jury—My gun is quick—Vengeance is mine eISBN : 978-1-440-67222-4 1. Hammer, Mike (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—New York (State)— New York—Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories, American. I. Title. PS3537.P652 A6 2001 813’.54—dc21 00-052728 Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. PUBLISHER’S NOTE These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. http://us.penguingroup.com Mickey Spillane: This Time It’s Personal If you have never read a Mike Hammer novel before, how I envy you. You are about to take the definitive wild ride of American mystery fiction, and will meet the most famous tough private eye of them all—Mike Hammer—not in a watered-down movie or TV show rendition, but via the gritty, mind-boggling real thing: the unmistakable, electrifying prose of Mickey Spillane. And—if you have read these novels before, perhaps a long, long time ago— you may be surprised to discover that Spillane isn’t just the remarkable entertainer you remember, but a distinctive literary stylist ... if not an “author” (a word he despises, always reminding us that he is a “writer,” and proud to be one), that his work nonetheless belongs on the same short shelf as that of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. I’ll give you the literary lowdown a few pages from now and make the “case” for Mickey Spillane and Mike Hammer as more than a mere entertainer and the pop-culture phenomenon he created. First, I want to get personal—and that’s fitting, because at the core of Spillane’s success is the personal nature of his storytelling. Mike Hammer is always motivated not by a client who walks in the door, but the murder of a friend. He is a detective, yes, and a much better one than he is ever given credit for; but he is, first and last, an avenger. Something personal is at stake at the heart of every Spillane novel, particularly the Mike Hammers. And Hammer himself is (as Spillane has frequently said) “a state of mind;” with only the barest references to physical description—Hammer is “big,” he’s “ugly”—Spillane presents a character so vivid, whose voice is so readily identifiable, that for five decades filmmakers have been frustrated to recreate this famous character satisfactorily on the screen. It’s I, the Jury, after all—emphasis on the “I.” With Hammer’s idiosyncratic yet natural voice, Spillane merges his hero’s mind with the reader’s in a manner that makes a Hammer yarn both immediate and intimate. And like the early Beatles, Spillane knew that using first-person pronouns in his titles would emphasize the personal nature of his hero’s quest. I started reading Mickey’s Mike Hammer novels when I was thirteen—and that’s the age I revert to whenever I read a Spillane novel. How vividly I recall encountering the clerk behind the counter of some drugstore in some town along