LILEKS on Mickey Spillane

Mickey Spillane, an author I thought died long ago. He was not a graceful stylist - he wrote like someone ripping meat with a bent fork - but he exposed everything nasty and cruel in a genre that masked its grue behind wry and cynical turns of phrase. For that I suppose we should be grateful, since truth is always preferable to artifice, no? No. I'm bored by English drawing-room murder mysteries, but I prefer the aspirations and pretensions of Chandler. (The previous sentence was brought to you by an English major. Can you tell?) Spillane's sons are still at work - Shinder's bookstore downtown still has a rack of serial novels like The Executioner, but the genre is in decline. You look at the covers, read the summaries, and you hear the unoiled creak of a revolving rack in a bus station. There's a cheap suitcase at your feet, bound with twine. You're wearing a hat with a stained band. Seventeen hours to Peoria. A guy you knew in Korea said he might have a job for you.
You'll need something to read between here and there. Hell, it's all between here and there, when you think about it. You pass on the Hammett. You go for the Spillane. You don't like the part where the dame gets it, but you don't exactly skip it, either.