On a lively night at the Victory saloon in Trinidad, New Mexico, Sheriff Caleb York interrupts his poker game to settle a minor dust-up that raises the stakes into major trouble. The wounded miscreant he ushers to the hoosegow spills the secret behind the mysterious disappearance of a certain stage coach.

Bound for Denver, the stage carried three important passengers — beautiful ranch owner Willa Cullen, lovely temptress Rita Filley, and wealthy banker Raymond L. Parker. The two women are rivals for the lawman’s love, while Parker is a key investor in Trinidad’s future. But all are gone, with only the corpses of fellow passengers as bullet-ridden clues.

York follows a trail of blood to a ghost town known as Hell Junction. To rescue his lady friends and the banker, he must infiltrate an outlaw den... and pray no one among the thieves, killers, and kidnappers will recognize him. With only his desert rat deputy to back him up, York must free the captives, round up the badmen — and, whenever necessary, send them straight to Hell.

Here, collected for the first time, are the earliest short stories bylined Mickey Spillane... all written between 1941 and 1942.

Enter a world of seedy nightclubs, dangerous, dimly-lit street and cool, wisecracking dicks pitting themselves against armies of ruthless gangsters. This is pulp fiction, a genre spawned amid the disillusionment of post-World War I America — and now reaching new heights of popularity.

Writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett turned that unique blend of rapid-fire action, violence and cynical humour into an art form that is being recreated by a fresh wave of young writers whose stories have all the drama and atmosphere of their predecessors’.

This page-turning collection, brought together by a true aficionado of the hardboiled story, includes, of course, Chandler and Hammett, but also Mickey Spillane, Ross MacDonald, Ed McBain and James Hadley Chase from the vintage years and from the current generation James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino, to name just a few of the twenty great writers featured here. Even Stephen King, doyen of the world of horror, has turned his hand to pulp fiction and is represented in this book.

The world of the hard-drinking, fast-action, apparently indestructible private eye, personified by Chandler’s creation, Philip Marlowe, was never more vibrant. It’s all here, and more, in a book that no fan of the genre can afford to miss.

A legendary and retired police chief lies in a New York hospital bed, visited by two strangers: the first is ex-cop-turned-PI Mike Hammer, whose life was saved more than once by the old man. To the detective, the chief gives a mysterious key. The second visitor murders the chief, mere days before he would have died from natural causes. Someone is trying to tie up loose ends, and Mike Hammer is the only one with the evidence and calculation to ferret him or her out.

From New York Times bestselling authors Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins — the legend of Caleb York continues as the renowned gunslinger fights to bring justice to the blood-soaked streets of Trinidad, New Mexico.

Caleb York has made up his mind and packed his bags. He’ll be on the next stage, bound for San Diego and a new life as a Pinkerton man. But before Caleb can say a proper goodbye to his sweetheart, Willa, a peaceful morning erupts into blazing gunfire.

Someone has to bring law and order to the wild little town of Trinidad, even as a band of outlaw brothers rides the vengeance trail and a new cattle baron sets his sights on more land... and on Willa, too. Looks like Caleb will be staying on for a while.

With his Colt loaded for justice, and a sheriff’s badge on his chest, Caleb York emerges as a classic Western hero who knows just how to stand up to the deadliest of enemies — and win.

Mickey Spillane’s larger-than-life lawman Caleb York is back — in the latest tough-as-nails Western novel from New York Times bestselling author Max Allan Collins. This time Caleb may be outnumbered... but not outgunned. The Santa Fe Railroad wants to build a spur through Trinidad, New Mexico, linking the town to the cattle trade. Only one man stands against it — rancher George Cullen. At the request of the town council, Sheriff Caleb York rides out to the Bar-O to reason with his old friend. Even Cullen’s daughter Willa, Caleb’s former flame, is for the railroad. But the stubborn blind rancher won’t budge.

Cullen’s former partner, Burt O’Malley, has recently returned from a twenty-year stint in the pen for manslaughter. And hired gun Alver Hollis, the much-feared Preacherman, has also shown up with two cronies, claiming they’re in town for the biggest poker game in the territory.

With murder in the wind, the whole town’s in danger. Who will be the next target? To bring a killer to justice, and protect the woman he loves, Caleb York must strap down his Colt .44, enter the big game, and bet his life on the turn of a card... and the speed of his draw.

Mickey Spillane’s latest mystery features a new and special type of hero — a man assigned a government mission because he is so outstanding a criminal. Morgan the Raider, so called because his audacity compares to that of the famous pirate of old, stands convicted of having stolen $40,000,000. He is good at stealing himself out of jail, too; he has already escaped from custody once. Now he is offered a chance for a reduced sentence — but at the risk of his life. For he must get himself Into Latin American escape-proof prison, a granite torture fortress known as the Pose Castle, in order to find and free an important scientist. A beautiful American agent is assigned the job of accompanying — and watching — him, and he is scrutinized a lot less pleasantly by the Latin American rulers and an unknown assailant.

Mickey Spillane introduces Morgan the Raider in a novel which is at once an exciting mystery and a wonderfully colorful adventure story.

Dogeron Kelly, a walking bomb of a man, and Sharon Cass, a bright and beautiful girl old enough to know her own mind — and that mind is set on saving her precious gifts for the right man — are the star-crossed lovers of this new blockbuster by one of the world’s most popular writers.

All the rest is sex, violence, intrigue. A baronial old-family manor, high-level international illegal traffic, paid mobsters, café society, the rich and the beautiful, the vicious and the criminal, all are part of the fast-moving plot of the best Spillane ever.

This is gripping entertainment if ever there was: colorful, expert, impossible to put down. It is the first major Spillane novel that isn’t a Mike Hammer detective story, but the Spillane fan will recognize the touch of the master.

...the sub-chieftain of East Side prostitution died on silken sheets in a high rise apartment building whose door he thought was absolutely pick-proof.

Nobody heard a shot. Nobody saw an intruder...

With that, Spillane’s high-octane prose zeroes in on the no-holds-barred story of Gillian Burke, The Gill, an ex-cop who loves hard and hates hard. Mainly he hates the syndicate. Ever since the syndicate maneuvered him off the force, he’s made it his business to know what the syndicate was up to.

When some of the syndicate’s most important operators are put out of business, violently and permanently, by a mysterious assassin, Gill is persuaded to put his badge back on and see if he can find the killer before any innocent people get hurt. His investigation has hardly begun when he becomes involved, in unforeseen dangerous ways, with a ruby-lipped cop’s daughter in the pay of a syndicate higher-up and with Helga, a luscious Swedish blonde.

The scenes of passion have a vivid frankness unheard-of in previous Spillane mysteries. Explosive sex and top-notch suspense guarantee to keep the reader gasping till the satisfying and surprising end.

Gentle Reader: You’ve probably never been suspected of embezzling a bank of two hundred thousand bucks, or of murdering a D.A., and I sure hope you never have been. I was suspected of having done both.

That was six years ago, in Lyncastle, a small town in the Middle West. It was too much for me at the time and, while nothing was ever proved either way, I lit out of town for the West and wound up in the oil fields of Oklahoma. At least that’s the way Johnny McBride told it to me, and we became great buddies. The funny thing about it was that we looked exactly alike — nobody could tell us apart. It was pretty confusing for a while, but it was sort of run, too. We had some great rimes together, and I decided I’d come back to Lyncastle to see what I could find out about this mess. Knowing Johnny as well as I did, I was pretty sure Johnny wasn’t guilty.

Well, I found our all right. I found out plenty! It’s a good thing I can take it because by the time I got through I had taken just about everything chat Lyncastle could hand out. But it wasn’t altogether one-sided on char score; I can dish it our, too!

If you like things rough and tough The Long Wait is for you. You won’t have as long a wait to get your satisfaction as I had to get mine.

Signed, Johnny

The word “legend” truly applies to Mickey Spillane, whose mystery novels have endured as bestsellers for more than half a century. This unique book collects several of his first-rate stories that have never appeared in a Spillane book before.

Three of the stories center on Spillane’s love of flying and his experiences as a pilot. “Hot Cat” — under the title “The Flier” — was the title novella of a rare British paperback. A typical macho mystery, it’s vintage Spillane. “I’ll Die Tomorrow” is another real find. Unseen since it was published in the January 1953 edition of Cavalier, it’s one of Spillane’s toughest, purest crime stories — no nice-guy P.I. here.

“Affair with the Dragon Lady” is an uncharacteristically warm, nostalgic piece. And “The Veiled Woman” is the controversial science fiction yarn that had input from another great pulp writer, Howard Browne. “The Night I Died” is a Mike Hammer story, with all the classic Spillane ingredients: betrayal, sex, gangsters, and revenge. Two real-life vignettes — “Toys for the Man Child” and “The Chinatown Man” — round out this collection of “lost Spillane.”

A true delight for crime fiction fans, this edition is sure to become a collector’s item.

Он был славным парнем. Теперь он мертв. Это все, что знает Хаммер о том, из-за чего полиция суетится в его номере гостиницы. Слишком мало, потому что Хаммер подозревает здесь убийство, тогда как копы считают произошедшее самоубийством.

Среди гангстеров, супермоделей и толстосумов ведет свое расследование частный детектив без лицензии и оружия, и куда бы ни он направился, все время сталкивается с красавицей блондинкой, хранящей секреты, которые раскроют тайну убийства славного парня.