A Visit With Mickey Spillane

The first time I spoke with Mickey Spillane was the day after his 86th birthday party held here in Murrells Inlet, SC. We provided a movie poster to be displayed in the banquet hall.

Ruth and I had been invited to share in the celebration. During the evening, we invited Mickey to stop by our bookstore in town.

I admit I did not think he would. After all, we had opened the store nearly a year earlier, displayed some of his movie posters in the front windows, and knew he drove by a time or two every day.

However, Mickey walked through the front door around 11am and wandered around looking at displays of books and toy cars, something he collected, and finally stopped at the counter.

I had an original I, The Jury movie poster under the counter, which I took out and showed him. He broke into a grin, shook his head and said, "Biff." He clearly didn't think that Biff Elliott was a great Mike Hammer (he played the part in the original movie). After a moment of hesitation, I asked him to sign the poster. He looked at me and I read his reluctance, and watched him sign despite how he might've felt. I promised him then that I would not ask him to sign anything else, and never did.

As a long time fan of Mike Hammer, I had collected many items related to his career, including some books written by other authors who he had helped promote by sending their work to his agent.

We talked about a man named Garrety who wrote some hardboiled cop books. When I asked him what happened to this writer, he told me he had died young, and by his tone, I surmised that Garrety died due to behavior Mickey did not agree with.

After walking around the store with him, showing him collections writers that few people read anymore, both mysteries and science fiction, he turned to me and said, "So many of them are gone now. Death just doesn't make sense."

I'd never thought about death in that way, but had to agree and still do.

By the time he left, around an hour later, he had invited Ruth and me to visit him at home, which we did and started a brief but good friendship.

More on Mickey later.