He was born Frank Spillane in Brooklyn on March 9, 1918, and baptized with the middle name Michael, which his father shortened to Mickey. "Authors want their names down in history I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney." "I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am," Spillane said in a 2001 interview. The cause of death was not immediately known. Spillane, 88, died yesterday at home in Murrells Inlet, S.C., a small coastal community where he'd lived since the 1950s. Most of his more than two dozen novels featured his harder-than-hard-boiled detective Mike Hammer, who battled, gangsters, goons and Communists with equal ferocity, often aided by his adoring secretary, Velda. Spillane's books - with their then-startling mix of sex, sadism and gunplay - redefined the detective story for the post-World War II generation, and made him one of the top-selling American authors of all time. With that final paragraph from his first novel, 1947's "I, the Jury," Mickey Spillane made his bones. I had only a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to truth.
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