least two other writers, Charlie Wells and David J. Gerrity ("Garrity"), were also touted by the Mick and returned the favor with book dedications. Neither Gerrity, who continues to produce an occasional paperback original, nor Wells, who disappeared from the mystery scene after two novels, had the Spillane knack for raw and stomach-churning violence; Basinsky, however, did. He also had a knack for clichés, a narrative style that only approximates literacy, and a shameless desire to wax poetic every now and then, as in the following "miniprologue" which opens The Big Steal :
Â
I am caught between the past and the future like a wriggling worm in a vise. Seen through shimmering quicksilver.
The present is nonexistent, the here and now is never.
I either exist in the past in memory or base my future on what the past has been. But this is useless.
For there are X factors over which I have no control and I cannot foresee the future even dimly, much as one would try to see the bottom of a stream through muddy swirling water.
Yet I live in the future.
Trapped there by what has happened in the past knowing nothing of the present.
This is the story.
Â
The story involves the theft of $400,000 in ransom money, which the police have recovered after killing a kidnapper (who had previously murdered his kidnap victim), but which mysteriously disappears en route to the police station. Conway, in charge of the suitcase in which the money was supposed to have been placed, is accused of the theft. Ostracized by his police cohorts, deserted by his wife and friends, he sets out on a personal odyssey to retrieve the missing money and find the person or persons who framed him.
The opening chapter depicts Conway being viciously beaten with a rubber hose by his former police buddies, who are not only willing to believe him guilty on the basis of circumstantial evidence but who take delight in whipping hell out of him; the final chapter depicts Conway deliberately shooting a wounded man in the belly and watching him die because the man butchered Conway's dog. In between, there are various beatings, shootings, and slashings, a beautiful dope addict with whom Conway falls in love, a variety of thugs, some crooked cops, and such dialogue as:
Â
As the drapes swirled close behind him, the man
with the bandage turned and jammed a gun in my stomach. "Okay, let's have it pal."
"Have what?"
"The heater, pal. The one you use so well without squeezing the trigger. This time I wanta make sure. My face still feels like it was caught in a revolving door . -
"That's right, chum, a gun can be mighty rough even without bullets. . . . And another thing . with you this close I could make you eat your own gun and you wouldn't even know what happened."
He moved back two steps. "Okay, you go first. This time I got a itchy trigger finger."
Â
Which brings us to a fourth kind of copâthe wisecracking type who, like his private-eye counterparts, spends more time pursuing horny females than murderous felons. And it also brings us to a phenomenon almost as impressive as Mickey Spillane himself: an Australian named Alan G. Yates, better known as Carter Brown.
Spillane, of course, is the bestselling mystery writer of all time, with close to 100 million copies sold of a mere 20 novels and 6 collections. Second place is a toss-up between Erle Stanley Gardner and Yates, whose 200-plus novels under the Carter Brown pen name have sold in excess of 60 million copies in the English speaking world. Â "Inspired" by the success of Spillane, or so he once claimed in a television interview, Yates began publishing mysteries in 1953, after a not very sparkling career as a salesman, publicity writer, and film technician; his first 50 or so books appeared only in Australia, first from Transport and then, in late 1954, from Horwitz Publications of Sydney, which continues to the present as his primary publisher. It was not until 1958 that the Carter Brown novels crossed
Â
I am caught between the past and the future like a wriggling worm in a vise. Seen through shimmering quicksilver.
The present is nonexistent, the here and now is never.
I either exist in the past in memory or base my future on what the past has been. But this is useless.
For there are X factors over which I have no control and I cannot foresee the future even dimly, much as one would try to see the bottom of a stream through muddy swirling water.
Yet I live in the future.
Trapped there by what has happened in the past knowing nothing of the present.
This is the story.
Â
The story involves the theft of $400,000 in ransom money, which the police have recovered after killing a kidnapper (who had previously murdered his kidnap victim), but which mysteriously disappears en route to the police station. Conway, in charge of the suitcase in which the money was supposed to have been placed, is accused of the theft. Ostracized by his police cohorts, deserted by his wife and friends, he sets out on a personal odyssey to retrieve the missing money and find the person or persons who framed him.
The opening chapter depicts Conway being viciously beaten with a rubber hose by his former police buddies, who are not only willing to believe him guilty on the basis of circumstantial evidence but who take delight in whipping hell out of him; the final chapter depicts Conway deliberately shooting a wounded man in the belly and watching him die because the man butchered Conway's dog. In between, there are various beatings, shootings, and slashings, a beautiful dope addict with whom Conway falls in love, a variety of thugs, some crooked cops, and such dialogue as:
Â
As the drapes swirled close behind him, the man
with the bandage turned and jammed a gun in my stomach. "Okay, let's have it pal."
"Have what?"
"The heater, pal. The one you use so well without squeezing the trigger. This time I wanta make sure. My face still feels like it was caught in a revolving door . -
"That's right, chum, a gun can be mighty rough even without bullets. . . . And another thing . with you this close I could make you eat your own gun and you wouldn't even know what happened."
He moved back two steps. "Okay, you go first. This time I got a itchy trigger finger."
Â
Which brings us to a fourth kind of copâthe wisecracking type who, like his private-eye counterparts, spends more time pursuing horny females than murderous felons. And it also brings us to a phenomenon almost as impressive as Mickey Spillane himself: an Australian named Alan G. Yates, better known as Carter Brown.
Spillane, of course, is the bestselling mystery writer of all time, with close to 100 million copies sold of a mere 20 novels and 6 collections. Second place is a toss-up between Erle Stanley Gardner and Yates, whose 200-plus novels under the Carter Brown pen name have sold in excess of 60 million copies in the English speaking world. Â "Inspired" by the success of Spillane, or so he once claimed in a television interview, Yates began publishing mysteries in 1953, after a not very sparkling career as a salesman, publicity writer, and film technician; his first 50 or so books appeared only in Australia, first from Transport and then, in late 1954, from Horwitz Publications of Sydney, which continues to the present as his primary publisher. It was not until 1958 that the Carter Brown novels crossed
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