The Mystery Fancier (Vol. 8 No. 4) July-August 1986

Mickey Spillane · Ellery Queen

Sep 2010 · Wildside Press LLC

About this ebook

The Mystery Fancier, Volume 8 Number 4, July-August 1986, contains: "That Pawn-Shop Gypsy," by Bob Sampson, "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer: The Great Cover-Up," by Jeff Banks, "The Rural Policeman in American Mystery Fiction," by George Dove and "The Cream of Queen," by Frank Floyd.

About the author

Mickey Spillane was born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn, New York on March 9, 1918. He briefly attended Fort Hays State College in Kansas, but dropped out, moved back to New York, and began his writing career in the mid-1930s. His first stories were published mostly in comic books and pulp magazines. He created Mike Danger, a private detective, and also wrote for Captain America, Captain Marvel, and The Human Torch. During World War II, he worked as a flying instructor for the U.S. Army Air Force. His first novel, I, the Jury, featured Mike Hammer and was published in 1947. His other novels include Vengeance Is Mine; My Gun Is Quick; The Big Kill; Kiss Me, Deadly; The Long Wait; and The Deep. Between 1952 and 1961 Spillane stopped writing full-length novels after converting to a Jehovah's Witness. In 1962, he brought Hammer back with The Girl Hunters, which was followed by Day of the Guns, The Death Dealers, The Twisted Thing, and Body Lovers. He also wrote two children's books, The Day the Sea Rolled Back, which won a prize from the Junior Literary Guild, and The Ship That Never Was. In 1995, he received the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America. In the mid-1990s, he returned to comic books, by co-creating a futuristic Mike Danger. He died following a long illness on July 17, 2006 at the age of 88. An unsuccessful entry in a mystery story contest turned into a career for Frederic Dannay and his cousin Manfred Lee. The story was picked up for publication in 1929, and the career of Ellery Queen, the pseudonym that Dannay and Lee chose, was off and running. The two wrote countless novels and short stories about Ellery Queen, a young detective who used reason to solve complex puzzles. Their emphasis was always on the intellectual rather than the emotional or intuitive capacities of the detective. In their successful series of novels, Ellery Queen is not only the name of the author, but also the detective-hero of the stories. Dannay and Lee founded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1941, and it proved to be important in keeping the genre vital. Ellery Queen has won numerous awards, including the Grand Master Award in 1960 from the Mystery Writers of America. More than 150 million Ellery Queen books are in print, and there have been Ellery Queen radio and television shows, as well as movies.