overlap

Mickey Spillane has died at the age of 88, a greater age than would be expected for almost anyone in his books. Famous for the Mike Hammer stories in particular, the other stuff is almost all just as good. One of the memorable points of my adolescence was the discovery of a stash of Spillane paperbacks in the loft, which had presumably originally belonged to my father, and a long period of reading my way through them. To me he was a great weaver of personal mythologies around all that gangster honour and respect cobblers, with no hiding from the brutality of violent crime and the hoped for eventual triumph of good over evil. My understanding is that we might not necessarily have enjoyed much common ground in our personal politics, but there's not one of his books I failed to enjoy for an hour or two. And for that I say cheers Mickey, time to dig out some of those fading paperbacks again.