Topic: Mickey Spillane

Frank Morrison Spillane (March 9, 1918 – July 17, 2006), better known as Mickey Spillane, was an American author of crime novels, many featuring his signature detective character, Mike Hammer. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. In 1980, Spillane was responsible for seven of the top 15 all-time bestselling fiction titles in America.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Spillane was the only child of his Irish-American bartender father, John Joseph Spillane, and his Scottish mother, Catherine Anne. Spillane attended Erasmus Hall High School, graduating in 1935. He started writing while in high school, briefly attended Fort Hays State College in Kansas and worked a variety of jobs, including summers as a lifeguard at Breezy Point, Queens, and a period as a trampoline artist for the Barnum and Bailey circus.

In 1951, Spillane became a Jehovah's Witness. Mickey and Mary Ann Spillane had four children (Caroline, Kathy, Michael, Ward), and their marriage ended in 1962. In November 1965, he married his second wife, nightclub singer Sherri Malinou, who later posed nude for the cover of The Erection Set (1972), a novel dedicated to her. After that marriage ended in divorce (and a lawsuit) in 1983, Spillane shared his waterfront house in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, with his third wife, Jane Rogers Johnson, whom he married in October 1983. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo ravaged his Murrells Inlet house to such a degree it had to be almost entirely reconstructed. A TV interview showed Spillane standing in the ruins of his house. He received an Edgar Allan Poe Grand Master Award in 1995. Spillane's novels went out of print, but in 2001, the New American Library began reissuing them.