Friendship was key in Mickey’s work and, of course, his life. Jack Stang, the hero of this novel, takes the name of the real-life upstate New York cop who was one of Mickey’s best friends, and who Mickey had hoped would one day play Mike Hammer in the movies. Mickey even shot a short try-out film for Stang as Hammer in the ’50s, and Stang appears with Mickey in the John Wayne produced film, Ring of Fear (1954), available on DVD. The irony is that Mickey blew Stang off the screen in that film, and set the stage for playing Hammer himself in The Girl Hunters (1963).
Toward the end of his life, Mickey realized he would not be able to finish these last few novels, and he indicated to me that after he was gone, these and other unfinished projects would be turned over for me to complete. I later learned that he’d said to his wife Jane, “Give all this stuff to Max — he will know what to do with it.”
No greater honor could have been paid to me by my friend, with the possible exception of the day he consented to be my son Nathan’s godfather.
Most of Dead Street is Mickey’s — eight of eleven chapters are his work, with minor additions and continuity corrections by me based upon his notes. Mickey famously said he didn’t rewrite, but this was not entirely accurate: he did modest line edits and rather major inserts, adding material where later plot developments required earlier clarification.
Often Mickey wrote the ending first, or at least a rough version of it; but that was not the case with Dead Street. He did, however, leave extensive notes ranging from plot concerns to characterization, and I was able to figure out where he was heading and what he was intending. The last few chapters I fashioned from those notes, and from conversations about Dead Street that Mickey and I had over the last several years.
I wish to thank Mickey’s wife Jane for her support and confidence, and for her willingness to dig and search for every scrap of Dead Street notes available (and these were extensive). I’d also like to thank my producing partner, Ken Levin; Mickey’s typist, Vickie Fredericks; Jane’s attorney David Gundling; and agent Dominick Abel. And, of course, thank you to Barbara Collins, my wife and frequent collaborator, who helped Jane and me conduct the “treasure hunt” among Mickey’s papers.
Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime had been in touch with Mickey during the last year or so of the writer’s life, and Mickey was greatly impressed with what the Hard Case line was accomplishing. I know he would be pleased to have Dead Street published here in the company of such writers he admired as Ed McBain, Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake.
Finally, of course, I must thank Mickey for his friendship, his influence and his faith in me. And for ensuring that a certain part of me remains at all times Mickey Spillane’s biggest thirteen-year-old fan.
Max Allan Collins
October 2006
Muscatine, Iowa
About the Author
MICKEY SPILLANE, creator of private eye Mike Hammer, was the bestselling American mystery writer of the 20th century, and likely the most influential. He was also the most widely translated fiction author of the 20th century, although he insisted he was not an “author,” but a writer.
A bartender’s son, Mickey Spillane was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 9, 1918. An only child who swam and played football as a youth, Spillane got a taste for storytelling by scaring other kids around the campfire. After a truncated college career, Spillane — already selling stories to pulps and slicks under pseudonyms — became a writer in the burgeoning comic-book field (Captain America, Submariner), a career cut short by World War II. Spillane — who had learned to fly at air strips as a boy — became an instructor of fighter pilots.
After the war, Spillane converted an unsold comic book project — Mike Danger, Private Eye — into a hard-hitting, sexy novel. The $1,000 advance was just what the writer needed to buy materials for a house he wanted to build for himself and his young wife on a patch of land in Newburgh, New York.
The 1948 Signet reprint of his 1947 E.P. Dutton hardcover novel, I, the Jury, sold in the millions, as did the six tough mysteries that soon followed; all but one featured hard-as-nails P.I. Mike Hammer. The Hammer thriller Kiss Me, Deadly (1952) was the first private eye novel to make the New York Times bestseller list.
Much of Mike Hammer’s readership consisted of Spillane’s fellow World War II veterans, and the writer — in a vivid, even surrealistic first-person style — escalated the sex and violence already intrinsic to the genre, in an effort to give his battle-scarred audience hard-hitting, no-nonsense entertainment. For this blue-collar approach, Spillane was attacked by critics and adored by readers. His influence on the mass-market paperback was immediate and long lasting, his success imitated by countless authors and publishers. Gold Medal Books, pioneering publisher of paperback originals, was specifically designed to tap into the Spillane market.
Spillane’s career was sporadic; his conversion in 1952 to the conservative religious sect, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, is often cited as the reason he backed away, for a time, from writing the violent, sexy Hammer novels. Another factor may be the enormous criticism heaped upon Hammer and his creator. Spillane claimed only to write when he needed the money, and in periods of little or no publishing, Spillane occupied himself with other pursuits — flying, traveling with the circus, appearing in motion pictures, and for nearly twenty years spoofing himself and Hammer in a lucrative series of Miller Lite beer commercials.
The controversial Hammer has been the subject of a radio show, a comic strip, and two television series, starring Darren McGavin (in the late ’50s) and Stacy Keach (in the mid-’80s with a 1997 revival, both produced by Spillane’s friend and partner, Jay Bernstein). Numerous gritty movies have been made from Spillane novels, notably director Robert Aldrich’s seminal film noir, Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and The Girl Hunters (1963), starring Spillane himself as his famous hero.
The sometime actor also appeared in two independent films (Mommy, 1995, and Mommy’s Day, 1997) written and directed by his mystery writer friend, Max Allan Collins.
Mickey Spillane died in July 2006, joining the ranks of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie, arguably the only other mystery writers of the 20th century with comparable name recognition.
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