Mickey Spillane - Literary Genius

So what makes great literature? Well, it certainly it can't be stories and books that are read and enjoyed by multimillions of ordinary people. If that was the criterion, the gentleman pictured here would be one of the greatest authors who ever lived.

Frank Morrison Spillane - called "Mickey" by his friends - ended up authoring 25 novels which sold over 200 million copies from 1947 to 2008 - fifteen which featured the hardboiled detective, Mike Hammer. Never very popular with the literary critics, the Mike Hammer novels were considered lowbrow entertainment by the literary pretentious and obscene trash by the more easily offended.

Mike, like many a fictional private eye - PI, for short - spent his time hunting down murderers, drug dealers, kidnappers, prostitution rings, spies, depraved religious cults, terrorists, and gangsters. A real he-man dick like Mike wouldn't have bothered wasting his shoe leather chasing down piddly-ant adulterous husbands, recovering unpaid merchandise, or tracing down missing persons.

Certainly Mike couldn't be bothered by the slowly turning wheels of justice, either. In his first novel, I, the Jury, he got a call from Detective Pat Chambers, his friend on the force, (all private eyes have a friend on the force). They had found Mike's best friend and fellow war vet had been killed. Naturally Mike was going to hunt down the killer. As he told Pat, it was going to be done his way.

From now on I'm after one thing, the killer. You're a cop, Pat. You're tied down by rules and regulations. There's someone over you. I'm alone. I can slap someone in the puss, and they can't do a damn thing. Some day, before long, I'm going to have my rod in my mitt and the killer in front of me. I'm going to watch the killer's face. I'm going to plunk one right in his gut, and when he's dying on the floor I may kick his teeth out.

I don't underrate the cops. But cops can't break a guy's arm to make him talk, and they can't shove his teeth in with the muzzle of a .45 to remind him that you aren't fooling.

The novels are, of course, fiction. Most real PI's don't carry guns and wouldn't touch a murder, kidnapping, or burglary case with a ten foot stack of film noir DVD's. In fact, if they did they might find their licenses revoked before they could say Peter Gunn.

You can get a better picture of the jobs for a real PI if you read the Tony Rome novels or see the surprisingly good movies starring Frank Sinatra. Mystery fans will still get the hard boiled street talk, the tough dames, and the give-and-take with the cops on the force (yes, Tony has a friend on the force, Lieutenant Dave Santini). But Tony's actual jobs are a bit more what you'd really see a PI doing: locating errant rich girls for their fathers, recovering lost jewelry, stuff like that. Of course, you couldn't sell many books or movie tickets on such plots alone. So as Tony does the work for his clients, he still somehow manages to get mixed up with blackmailers, killers, hookers, bookies, boxers, hot ladies, strippers, pushers, fences, junkies, and big time jewel thieves. Oh, this could happen to a real PI we suppose since investigative work does sometimes bring you into contact with the - ah - wrong class of people.

Of course, Tony packs a heater. He also would use rough stuff and didn't have any hesitation to walking uninvited into private homes or businesses if he needed information. But like we said, this is not a recommended modus for legitimate PI's, but it is also not unheard of either. But a real PI couldn't end up shooting three men in 24 hours and simply walk out after calling the cops, saying he'd see them later - not if he wants to stay out of jail and keep working. And despite what Mike said, if a PI slaps a guy in the puss, breaks his arm, or shoves in his teeth, the fellow can do something about it. PI's can be prosecuted for assault and battery or any other crime just like anyone else. They have to obey laws just like all private citizens. Well, there is one exception. If you have a PI license you are usually allowed to loiter.

Mike has also been the protagonist in a number of movies and TV shows. With apologies to Biff Elliott, Brian Keith, and Stacy Keach, the best Mike on the screen - big or little - remains the portrayal by Darren McGavin (the father in A Christmas Story) which debuted in 1958. Darren's portrayal is not as hard bitten as his literary counterpart, and the show is played with plenty of tongue in cheek. But like in the books, the television Mike doesn't like to bother with legal niceties, and what raises the eyebrows of the modern audiences who are remember the prissiness of 1950' TV shows ("Ozzie and Harriet", "I Love Lucy", "Leave It to Beaver") is the amount of violence and sexual innuendo in the episodes. Mike has no hesitation pounding hoods and slapping punks around (including teenage "beatniks") for information. He regularly shoots three or four people a week (or tosses them out upper-story windows or down fire escapes). There's also a lot of the shows where Mike has to deal with men who are indulging in non-family valued recreation, including said recreation requiring payment. One of the - ah - gentlemen - who was taking refreshment on the side and needed Mike's help was none other than a pre-Bonanza Lorne Greene. It was the subject matter and violence that contributed to the show's cancellation after two years. Laughable by today's standards, but there you are.

On the other hand there is one habit of Mike's that is - at least from our standards today - absolutely unforgivable. Mike smokes on camera.

References

The Process of Investigation: Concepts and Strategies for the Security Professional, Charles A. Sennewald, Butterworth-Heinemann (1981). A bit more advanced than the common you-too-can-be-a-private-investigator. But you learn that for a PI, whether self employed or on salary (only about 20 % of PI's work in a solo business), his main role is to gather information. Rough stuff is a non-no and as for chasing crooks, that's for the police. At the same time CooperToons remembers a PI telling him his favorite technique to get information from a reluctant informant was to slap on a pair of cuffs and make sure they were on tight. Very tight. We mean very tight. Again not a recommended method as PI's have no legal authority to detain individuals, much less use coercive methods of interrogation. And this PI - long gone to the wet pavements in the sky - did have occasionally difficulties with the local district attorney.

The Eye That Never Sleeps: A History of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, Frank Morn, University of Indiana Press. Unlike most PI's today, the Pinkertons really did hunt down big time criminals particularly when the crooks were hurting the interests of big business. Alan Pinkerton - originally a guard for Abraham Lincoln and later head of the fledgling Secret Service - realized there was a need for a national police force. But in that day there was no FBI and the only national officers were the federal marshals. So Alan set up a private agency and worked at anything from spying on employees who night be filching from the company till to chasing down big time gangs like that Jesse James or Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch.

In many ways, Alan was not the most sterling example of a private investigator, and he would use tactics that nowadays are completely illegal and enter into the terroristic. When trying to apprehend Jesse, his men surrounded the James farm, riddled the home with gunfire, and finally threw in a bomb that exploded in the main room, killing Jessie's ten year old half brother, Archie Samuel, and blowing off the arm of Jessie's mother. Neither Jessie nor his brother Frank were home.

Later a Pinkerton detective was found tied to a tree, brutalized, tortured, and quite dead. The crime - officially - was never solved, but historians have an idea who was guilty.

PI Magazine Online, http://www.pimagazine.com/private_investigator_faq.htm. Questions related to what real private investigators do.