Mickey Spillane

Mickey Spillane, the king of the pulp novelists in the post-WW II period, sold an estimated 200 million copies globally. He was born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn, New York. Young Frank's mother was a Protestant who bestowed on him his middle name "Morrison", but his Irish Catholic father, barkeep John Joseph Spillane, allegedly had his son baptized with the middle name "Michael", a traditional name for Irishmen (so common, in fact, that the nickname derived from it, "Mick", served as a derogatory term for Irishmen in both the US and England). "Women liked the name Mickey", Spillane said, explaining why he chose the moniker that eventually became one of the world's best-selling novelists. In 1980 seven of the top 15 all-time bestselling fiction books published in the U.S. had been written by Spillane. Despite the fact that his books were international bestsellers, as a writer Spillane was almost universally reviled by literary critics. He and his novels were attacked not only fo