Vengeance is Mine

Description

Before Jack Reacher . . . there was Mike Hammer Out-of-town salesman Chester Wheeler is an old war buddy of PI Mike Hammer's. Now he's dead, supposedly having shot himself after an all-night drinking session - as Hammer's guest. Hammer wakes up to the sound of the police questioning him, but he suspects murder. While the DA takes his PI and gun licences, Hammer gets out on the trail. Pushing his way through a swirl of gay bars and gaming clubs, high-price fashion models and not just a little blackmail, he realises someone is working hard to frame him. And, with the help of his police buddy, Pat Chambers, and secretary Velda - now holding her own PI licence - he's working hard to find out why. Everywhere he turns, he keeps coming up against a blonde beauty named Juno. She holds the key to a crime wave that could unlock the mystery behind Chester's murder . . .

Born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn, New York City, Mickey Spillane started writing while at high school. During the Second World War, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a fighter pilot and instructor. After the war, he moved to South Carolina. He was married three times, the third time to Jane Rogers Johnson, and had four children and two stepchildren. He wrote his first novel, I, the Jury (1947), in order to raise the money to buy a house for himself and his first wife, Mary Ann Pearce. The novel sold six and a half million copies in the United States, and introduced Spillane's most famous character, the hardboiled PI Mike Hammer. The many novels that followed became instant bestsellers, until in 1980 the US all-time fiction bestseller list of fifteen titles boasted seven by Mickey Spillane. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. He was uniformly disliked by critics, owing to the high content of sex and violence in his books. However, he was later praised by American mystery writers Max Alan Collins and William L. DeAndrea, as well as artist Markus Lupertz. The novelist Ayn Rand, a friend of Spillane's, appreciated the black-and-white morality of his books. Spillane was an active Jehovah's Witness. He died in 2006.

Remorseless . . . Spillane keeps the action coming - Publishers Weekly Spillane is a master at compelling you always to turn the next page - New York Times Spillane is still shooting the same tasty dish - New York Times Book Review