This sharp, ironic, tightly written thriller takes place during a single night, during which our narrator, editor of a small-city newspaper, shows what stuff journalists were made of then by consuming a truly epic amount of alcohol and unweaving an artfully tangled web.

    Men and women didn't make love, they collided. Tough brutes used their fists to drive home a message. Tougher broads used guile. And no one's morals were loftier than the gutter. No apologies. Little redemption. They rendered critics powerless, shocked intellectuals, inspired a new wave of pulp mayhem, and left the public hungry for more.Given their hot, fever-pitch prose and breathless pacing, Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels quickly became one of the most successful series in publishing history—an innovative, no-holds-barred, ultravisceral explosion of sex and violence that made Hammer a literary legend, and Spillane, one of the bestselling authors of all time. After fifty years, neither has lost their power to sucker punch the reader.Find out for yourself in this first-time ever omnibus featuring the first three Mike Hammer novels by the living master of the hard-boiled mystery…

    "I probably never would have become America's leading fire-eater if Flamo the Great hadn't happened to explode that night in front of Krinko's Great Combined Side Shows."A true story of carnival life, in which the author learns the tricks of the trade, meets some wonderful people (and some crooks) and lives an odd and interesting life.

    From the moment he finds in his files a photograph marked "Krassy Almauniski, winner of the Stockyard News beauty contest", he’s obsessed and ends up following an old trail that leads to nothing but trouble.

    Murder was done there, it was said, and other deeds, wanton and eerie. With a special introduction by author David Bischoff, who points out that this books smokes with the kind of passion you don't get much in this explicit era.