One of the most maligned writers of the twentieth century, Mickey Spillane has always been popular with readers. His name appears more than any other on lists of best-selling authors since World War II, yet his writing has been labeled "atrocious" by John G. Cawelti in his 1969 essay "The Spillane Phenomenon" in the Journal of Popular Culture and "nauseating" by Julian Symons in his Mortal Consequences: A History from the Detective Story to the Crime Novel (1972). A common complaint of critics, especially in his heyday in the early 1950s, is that Spillane uses gratuitous violence and sex to sell books, and undoubtedly these characteristics appeal to his vast audience. Beyond the contents of Spillane's novels, however, most readers respond positively to his style. In a quiz published on 23 July 1995 in The New York Times Magazine, Frank Gannon challenged readers to identify the author of ten quotations selected from...