Black Alley

Mickey Spillane

Dutton, 1996 - Fiction - 234 pages

Yes, Mike Hammer is back, and in deeper trouble and darker danger than ever before. He has the gunning down of an old army buddy to pay back with interest. He has two generations of the most powerful family in the Mafia to beat at their own gory games. He has a missing chunk of vital memory blown out of his head by a bullet in his guts. And above all, he has a missing cache of $89 billion to find in a slick maze of false clues, phony stories, brutal betrayals, and deadly twists and turns, before the bad guys get their hands on it and their sights on him. And to complicate matters, the Feds have dealt themselves into the game, eager to beat everybody else to the loot. On his side, against this awesome array of evil, he has only his beautiful, loving, and when necessary lethal secretary, Velda. Plus a pair of rock-hard fists. And his old reliable companion, his well-oiled .45. Yes, Mike Hammer is definitely back with the kind of action and excitement that only he delivers. Which is another way of saying that fans of the greatest of hard-knuckled heroes are once again in the hands of the grand master, Mickey Spillane, at the very top of his form.

Contents

• Section 1: 1
• Section 2: 11
• Section 3: 24

About the author

Mickey Spillane was born in Brooklyn, New York on March 9, 1918. He briefly attended Fort Hays State College in Kansas, but dropped out, moved back to New York, and began his writing career in the mid-1930s. Spillane's first stories were published mostly in comic books and pulp magazines. He created Mike Danger, a private detective, and also wrote for Captain America, Captain Marvel, and The Human Torch. During WW II Spillane worked as a flying instructor for the U.S. Army Air Force. Achieving the rank of captain by the time, he left the service, and returned with his young wife in 1946 to New York. I, the Jury was written in only nine days, but it became such success that Spillane quickly produced six more Hammer novels, five of them published between 1950 and 1952. The Long Wait sold 3 million copies in a single week in 1952. On a list complied in 1967 of all the best-selling books published in America between 1895 and 1965, seven of the top twenty-nine were written by Spillane. Most of Spillane's short fiction was produced in the 1950s and published in Manhunt and such men's magazines as Cavalier and Male. Between 1953 and 1961 Spillane stopped writing full-length novels after converting to the Jehovah's Witnesses, and between 1973 and 1989 for sixteen years, when he advertised Miller Lite beer. In the early '50s, Spillane also became involved with a circus and did some trampoline work, as well as being shot out of a cannon. In 1962 Spillane brought Hammer back with The Girl Hunters, which was followed by four more titles. In 1995 the Mystery Writers of America presented Spillane the Grand Master award. In the mid-1990s, he returned to comic books, by co-creating a futuristic Mike Danger. Spillane has also written two books for children. The Day the Sea Rolled Back, which earned him a Junior Literary Guild Award. He died at the age of 88 on July 17, 2006 following a long illness.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Black Alley; Mike Hammer mystery thriller, Mickey Spillane; Book 13 of Mike Hammer
• Author: Mickey Spillane
• Publisher: Dutton, 1996
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 13, 2008
• ISBN: 0525942297, 9780525942290
• Length: 234 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General; Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Hard-Boiled