Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.

Two-page text stories which he wrote in the mid-1940s for Timely appeared under his name and were collected in Primal Spillane (Gryphon Books 2003). In the 1990s Spillane licensed one of his characters to Tekno Comix for use in a science-fiction adventure series Mike Danger. American comic book writer Frank Miller has mentioned Spillane as an influence for his own hard boiled style.

S. In 1980 Spillane was responsible for seven of the top 15 all-time best-selling fiction titles in the U. More than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally.