Murder Never Knocks

Co-Author’s Note

Shortly before his death, Mike Hammer’s creator Mickey Spillane paid me an incredible honor. He asked me to complete the Hammer novel that he currently had in progress — The Goliath Bone — and then told his wife Jane to gather all of the other unfinished, unpublished material and give it to me: “Max will know what to do.”

These manuscripts, surprising in number, spanned Mickey’s entire career from the late ’40s until his passing in 2006. Six manuscripts were substantial, usually 100 pages or more, with plot and character notes and sometimes roughed-out final chapters. Most of the books had been announced by Mickey’s publisher at various times from the 1950s through the ’90s. As a Spillane/Hammer fan since my early teens, I am delighted to finally see these long-promised books lined up on a shelf next to the thirteen Hammer novels published by Mickey in his lifetime.

In addition to the substantial novel manuscripts mentioned above, a number of shorter Mike Hammer manuscripts were uncovered in the treasure hunt conducted by Jane Spillane, my wife Barb and me, ranging over three offices in Mickey’s South Carolina home. Some of these were fragments of a few pages, primarily the openings of never-written novels or stories; these I have been gradually turning into short stories with an eventual collection in mind. Others were more substantial if less so than the six novel manuscripts, and — although they vary in particulars — these shorter manuscripts represent significant unfinished entries in the most popular American mystery series of the twentieth century.

I am now in the process of completing at least three of these shorter Hammer novels-in-progress; Murder Never Knocks is the second of these (the first, Kill Me, Darling, appeared in 2015). Mickey had completed several chapters but also left behind extensive plot and character notes, as well as a draft of the novel’s ending. Mike Hammer’s creator often said that he wrote the ending first. Of the unfinished manuscripts in Mickey’s files, Murder Never Knocks is one of the few that back up that assertion.

The alternate title, Don’t Look Behind You, is partly a tribute by Mickey to his favorite mystery writer, Fredric Brown, who wrote a famous short story of that name. Mickey’s other alternate titles were The Controlled Kill and The Controller.

Internal evidence in the narrative indicates Mickey began this novel in 1966 or 1967, before or after The Body Lovers (1967), and that is the time frame I’ve employed.

M.A.C.