Lady, Go Die! (25 page)

His upper lip was peeled back over his teeth and his eyes were crazy and dancing red. “I asked you a
question,
Mike! What do they
do
to mad dogs?”

I showed him.

Mickey Spillane
and
Max Allan Collins
collaborated on numerous projects, including twelve anthologies, three films and the
Mike Danger
comic book series.

Spillane was the bestselling American mystery writer of the twentieth century. He introduced Mike Hammer in
I, the Jury
(1947), which sold in the millions, as did the six tough mysteries that soon followed. The controversial P.I. has been the subject of a radio show, comic strip, and two television series; numerous gritty movies have been made from Spillane novels, notably director Robert Aldrich’s seminal film
noir
,
Kiss Me Deadly
(1955), and
The Girl Hunters
(1963), in which the writer played his famous hero.

Collins has earned an unprecedented sixteen Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations, winning for
True Detective
(1983) and
Stolen Away
(1993) in his Nathan Heller series, which includes the recent
Bye Bye, Baby
. His graphic novel
Road to Perdition
is the basis of the Academy Award-winning film. A filmmaker in the Midwest, he has had half a dozen feature screenplays produced, including
The Last Lullaby
(2008), based on his innovative Quarry series. As “Barbara Allan,” he and his
wife Barbara write the Trash ‘n’ Treasures mystery series (recently
Antiques Disposal
).

Both Spillane (who died in 2006) and Collins are recipients of the Private Eye Writers of America life achievement award, the Eye.

MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS

The Lost Mike Hammer Cold War Thriller


Hammer accompanies a conservative politician to Moscow on a fact-finding mission. While there, he is arrested by the KGB on a bogus charge, and imprisoned; but he quickly escapes, creating an international incident by getting into a fire fight with Russian agents.

On his stateside return, the government is none too happy with Mr. Hammer. Russia is insisting upon his return to stand charges, and various government agencies are following him. A question dogs our hero: why him? Why does Russia want him back, and why (as evidence increasingly indicates) was he singled out to accompany the senator to Russia in the first place?

Velda is also a target, and readers learn for the first time what happened to Mike’s secretary/partner in the years she spent as a CIA operative behind the Iron Curtain...

Hammer’s investigation takes him into the highest social circles of New York and Washington, D.C...

MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS

The Penultimate Mike Hammer Novel


As his old friend Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide approaches retirement, Hammer finds himself up against a clever serial killer targeting only cops.

A killer Chambers had put away many years ago is suddenly freed on new, apparently indisputable evidence, and Hammer wonders if, somehow, this seemingly placid, very odd old man might be engineering cop killings that all seem to be either accidental or by natural causes.

At the same time Hammer and Velda are dealing with the fallout—some of it mob, some of it federal government—over the $89 billion dollar cache the detective is (rightly) suspected of finding not long ago...