Winter 1964. After a hit-and-run accident nearly kills her mother, Mike Hammer’s partner (both in life and the PI business), Velda Sterling, learns her father is not who she thought he is. Seeking to uncover her true, troubling heritage, Velda and Mike travel to Phoenix, Arizona—and sunny Dreamland Park, where retired law enforcement officers protect and corral notorious criminals held under Witness Protection. Mike and Velda find themselves swept up in escalating violence, fueled by the missing millions from an armored-car robbery, which leads them to a deadly midnight confrontation in a cemetery—where secrets are buried and open graves await.

Mike Hammer, the iconic PI created by hard-boiled crime master Mickey Spillane and written by New York Times bestseller Max Allan Collins, returns in Masquerade for Murder. After Mike Hammer witnesses Wall Street superstar Vincent Colby getting clipped by a speeding red Ferrari, the shaken victim's stockbroker father hires Hammer to find the driver. But the toughest private eye of them all soon is caught up in a series of bizarre, seemingly unconnected slayings marked by a forbidden martial arts technique. What do a lovely redhead, a short-tempered bartender, an exotic call girl, a murdered police inspector and a movie stuntman have to do with a scheme that might have transformed young Colby into a psychological time bomb?

Before Jack Reacher . . . there was Mike Hammer 'The king of hard-boiled crime fiction' USA TODAY Classic pulp crime fiction from an author who has sold over 200 million copies worldwide. When Jack Williams is discovered shot dead, the investigating cop Pat Chambers calls his acquaintance, and Jack's closest friend, PI Mike Hammer. Back when they fought in the Marines together, Jack took a Japanese bayonet, losing his arm, to save Hammer. Hammer vows to identify the killer ahead of the police, and to exact fatal revenge. His starting point is the list of guests at a party at Jack's apartment the night he died: Jack's fiancee, a recovering dope addict, a beautiful psychiatrist, twin socialite sisters, a college student and a mobster. But as he tracks them down, so too does the killer, and soon it's not only Jack who is dead . . . And now Hammer is firmly in the killer's sights.

A Triple-Shot Anthology From the Undisputed Master of Detective Fiction.

In Mickey Spillane's classic detective novels, the action exploded in a bone-crunching catharsis. 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…

Hammer accompanies a politician to Moscow, where he is arrested by the KGB and imprisoned. He quickly escapes, but back in the States the government is none too happy. Russia demands his return to stand charges, and various government agencies are following him. A question dogs Hammer - why does Russia want him back, and why was he sent to Russia with the senator in the first place?

Hammer finds himself up against a clever serial killer targeting only cops. A killer his old friend Captain Pat Chambers had put away many years ago is suddenly freed on new, seemingly indisputable evidence, and Hammer wonders if this seemingly placid, very odd old man might somehow be engineering cop killings that all seem to be either accidental or by natural causes. At the same time Hammer and Velda are dealing with the fallout - some of it mob, some of it federal government - over the $89 billion dollar cache the detective is (rightly) suspected of finding not long ago.

ON MICKEY SPILLANE'S 100TH BIRTHDAY - A BRAND-NEW NOVEL FROM THE MASTER

When legendary mystery writer Mickey Spillane died in 2006, he left behind the manuscript of one last novel he'd just completed: THE LAST STAND. He asked his friend and colleague (and fellow Mystery Writers of America Grand Master) Max Allan Collins to take responsibility for finding the right time and place to publish this final book. Now, on the hundredth anniversary of Spillane's birth, his millions of fans will at last get to read THE LAST STAND, together with a second never-before-published work, this one from early in Spillane's career: the feverish crime novella A BULLET FOR SATISFACTION.

A tarnished former cop goes on a crusade to find a politician's killer and avoid the .45-caliber slug with his name on it. A pilot forced to make an emergency landing in the desert finds himself at the center of a struggle between FBI agents, unsavory fortune hunters, and members of the local Indian tribe to control a mysterious find that could mean wealth and power - or death. Two substantial new works filled with Spillane's muscular prose and the gorgeous women and two-fisted action the author was famous for, topped off by an introduction from Max Allan Collins describing the history of these lost manuscripts and his long relationship with the writer who was his mentor, his hero, and for much of the last century the bestselling author in the world.

Mickey Spillane's tough-talking, brawling, skirt-chasing private detective Mike Hammer returns to comics in this thrilling noir series, based on an original plot by Mickey Spillane, written by Max Allan Collins. When a chance encounter with a captivating femme fatale leads to a violent mob retaliation, hard-boiled detective Mike Hammer finds himself dodging both bullets and hard broads as he undertakes the most dangerous case of his career.

ON MICKEY SPILLANE'S 100TH BIRTHDAY-- A BRAND-NEW NOVEL FROM THE MASTER

When legendary mystery writer Mickey Spillane died in 2006, he left behind the manuscript of one last novel he d just completed: THE LAST STAND. He asked his friend and colleague (and fellow Mystery Writers of America Grand Master) Max Allan Collins to take responsibility for finding the right time and place to publish this final book. Now, on the hundredth anniversary of Spillane s birth, his millions of fans will at last get to read THE LAST STAND, together with a second never-before-published work, this one from early in Spillane s career: the feverish crime novella A BULLET FOR SATISFACTION.

A tarnished former cop goes on a crusade to find a politician s killer and avoid the .45-caliber slug with his name on it. A pilot forced to make an emergency landing in the desert finds himself at the center of a struggle between FBI agents, unsavory fortune hunters, and members of the local Indian tribe to control a mysterious find that could mean wealth and power or death. Two substantial new works filled with Spillane s muscular prose and the gorgeous women and two-fisted action the author was famous for, topped off by an introduction from Max Allan Collins describing the history of these lost manuscripts and his long relationship with the writer who was his mentor, his hero, and for much of the last century the bestselling author in the world.

Hammer is summoned to a meeting with Jamie Winters, United States Senator from New York, and Jamie's lovely, very smart wife, Nicole, considered by many to be the power behind the throne. Winters is being blackmailed, and Hammer is given a list of suspects who may be behind the threats to the Senator's career. But when the suspects begin to drop like flies, Hammer realises there is more to this case than just a salacious tape.

Mike Hammer's secretary and partner Velda has walked out on him, and Mike is just surfacing from a four-month bender. But then an old cop turns up murdered, an old cop who once worked with Velda. What's more, Mike's pal Captain Pat Chambers reveals that Velda is in Florida, the moll of gangster and drug runner Nolly Quinn. Hammer hits the road and drives to Miami, where he enlists the help of a horse-faced newspaperman and a local police detective. But can they find Velda in time? And what is the connection between the murdered vice cop in Manhattan, and Mike's ex turning gun moll in Florida?

* Hammer accompanies a politician to Moscow, where he is arrested by the KGB and imprisoned. He quickly escapes, but back in the States the government is none too happy. Russia demands his return to stand charges, and various government agencies are following him. A question dogs Hammer - why does Russia want him back, and why was he sent to Russia with the senator in the first place?

Paperback Quarterly, journal of the American Paperback Institute, Volume 2 Number 3, Fall 1979, contains: "Interview with Mickey Spillane," by Michael S. Barson, "The Penguin Story," by Eric Tucker, "See What the Boys in the Backwoods Will Have (And Tell Them I'm Having the Same)," by Bill Crider, "Spotlight 'Pockettes'," and "Harry Whittington -- Still a Winner.

Volume 7 Number 6 of The Mystery Fancier, November-December 1983, contains: "A Few Kind Words for Ashton-Kirk," by Bob Sampson, "The Violent World of Mike Hammer," by Jim Traylor, "The Old Man in the Corner," by Earl F. Bargainnier and "C. B. Greenfield: The Metaphor is the Man," by Jane S. Bakerman.