The Big Bang

COAUTHOR'S NOTE

This story takes place in the mid-1960s, when Mickey Spillane began it. With a deadline looming, he put The Big Bang aside, and substituted another Mike Hammer novel, The Twisted Thing, which he'd completed, and shelved, decades before.

In 1982, on a visit to Mickey's South Carolina home, I was handed by my host two substantial Mike Hammer manuscripts. I was flabbergasted—there hadn't been a Hammer published since 1970! I read late into the night, which was always my practice with Spillane novels, and the next morning at breakfast offered up enthusiastic reviews.

"Maybe we can do something with 'em someday," he said casually. On a later visit, in 1989, he sent the partial manuscripts home with me "for safekeeping."

Mickey's words proved prophetic: a few weeks later, Hurricane Hugo destroyed his home, and The Big Bang would likely have been lost.

We had spoken about the novel in detail, including the ending, which Mickey said was one of his favorites. My hope is that readers will greet this tale as enthusiastically as I did back in 1982, when Mickey Spillane handed me a stack of manuscript pages for bedtime reading.

M.A.C.