Kiss Me, Deadly - Mickey Spillane 1952 - E. P. Dutton &, New York - First Edition The sixth and final Mike Hammer mystery before Spillane went religious, and the source for Spillane's best-remembered film adaptation (and the one he most hated) with Robert Aldrich's 1955 fever dream starring Ralph Meeker. The first P.I. novel to ever make the best seller list (and I’m sure, annoy the hell out of) the New York Times.

This time the blonde (surprise), jumps out in front of Hammer’s car... Hammer takes a sordid dive into Mafia operations with all the horrors of a private army of gangsters and killers. The goal - find two million dollars worth of dope – and before Hammer undercut the local police, homicide, the F.B.I., and got the answer, a lot of people died horribly.
  Frank Morrison ‘Mickey’ Spillane (1918-2006) born Brooklyn, New York City. Spillane started writing while at high school. During the Second World War, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a fighter pilot and instructor. He wrote his first novel, I, the Jury (1947), in six weeks in order to raise the money to buy a house, it sold six and a half million copies in the USA, and introduced Spillane's most famous character, hardboiled PI Mike Hammer. Spillane wrote five more Hammer novels before becoming a Jehova’s witness in 1952, a decade later he returned to Hammer, starting with The Girl Hunters. By 1980 the US all-time fiction best-seller list of fifteen titles boasted seven by Spillane, and more than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. He was uniformly disliked by critics, owing to the high content of sex and violence in his books. However, he was later praised by American mystery writers Max Alan Collins and William L. DeAndrea, as well as artist Markus Lüpertz, and In 1995 he was named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America. The novelist Ayn Rand, a friend of Spillane's, appreciated the black-and-white morality of his books. Spillane remained an active Jehovah's Witness.

Octavo (19.5 x 13.5 cm) pp. 255 [1]. In publisher's orange/pale orange textured cloth, spine blocked in silver outlining lettering. Dust jacket priced $2.50 to lower corner of front flap.
  Condition: Near fine, mild toning to endpapers, in very good dust jacket, some wear to corners, three small chips to edge around head of spine, lighter rubbing to flap and spine folds, light foxing to verso.   Ref: 109093   Price: HK$ 1,600