Meandering in mystery . . .

Today is the birthday of Frank Morrison Spillane (March 9, 1918 – July 17, 2006), author. He is better known as Mickey Spillane, the creator of the fictional detective, Mike Hammer.

"Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book." - Mickey Spillane

"The biggest part of the joke is the punch line, so the biggest part of a book should be the punch line, the ending. People don't read a book to get to the middle, they read a book to get to the end and hope that the ending justifies all the time they spent reading it. So what I do is, I get my ending and, knowing what my ending is going to be, then I write to the end and have the fun of knowing where I'm going but not how I'm going to get there." - Mickey Spillane

"If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes." - Mickey Spillane

Spillane image source (1)