I might be assigning a Spillane book sometime this summer. BTW, Mickey Spillane NEVER did any re-writing of his stories. The first draft was also the last draft. He always took almost exactly one month to type out his novels (no rewriting). One reason why Spillanes Mike Hammer series was so good is that Spillane had (to put it gently) some mental health issues and this was reflected in the unbalanced mental state of his Mike Hammer character. For a seven year period, Spillane was in the Jehovas Witnesses and his writing tanked. Then when he (sort of) left that organization, his Mike Hammer novels returned full force again.
I'm a big Spillane fan. Also Spillane is so politically incorrect that he would consider most Freepers to be commie-libs. This is why I HATED the Mike Hammer TV series. They eliminated the way Mike Hammer would go "kill crazy" when he even thought he saw a commie. I wish that someday somebody would do an ACCURATE movie based on a Mike Hammer book.
p.s. Ayn Rand was a HUGE Mickey Spillane fan.
P.J., I received from Amazon.com a collection of all of Raymond Chandler's short stories. Just read Trouble Is My Business and it was a fantastic read! I will now read several more stories in preparation for your discussion thread of his works later on this month.
I hope that other Freepers are doing the same as this is great writing. I'll save my comments for the discussion but just want to mention that the style of writing reminds me of the old Steve Martin movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. It didn't do too well at the box office but it was one of my favorite Steve Martin films. Obvious the movie is a takeoff on the genre, but now I know where the screenwriters got most of their ideas!