In Mickey Spillane's classic private eye novels, the action exploded in a bone-crunching catharsis. Men and women didn't make love -- they collided. Tough brutes used their fists to drive home a message. Tougher broads used guile. And no one's morals were loftier than the gutter. No apologies. Little redemption. These novels rendered critics powerless, shocked intellectuals, inspired a new wave of pulp mayhem, and left the public hungry for more. Given their hot, fever-pitch prose and breathless pacing, Spillane's Mike Hammer novels quickly became one of the most successful series in publishing history -- an innovative, no-holds-barred, ultravisceral explosion of sex and violence that made Hammer a literary legend and Spillane one of the bestselling authors of all time. After fifty years, neither has lost his power to deliver a knockout punch.