Mickey Spillane crafted the steely Mike Hammer

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Mickey Spillane, the macho mystery writer who wowed millions of readers with the shoot-'em-up sex and violence of gumshoe Mike Hammer, died Monday. He was 88.

Mr. Spillane's death was confirmed by Brad Stephens of Goldfinch Funeral Home in his hometown of Murrells Inlet, S.C. Details about his death were not immediately available.

After starting out in comic books, Mr. Spillane wrote his first Mike Hammer novel, "I, the Jury," in 1946. Twelve more followed, with sales topping $100 million. Notable titles included "The Killing Man," "The Girl Hunters" and "One Lonely Night."

Many of these books were made into movies, including the classic film noir "Kiss Me, Deadly" and "The Girl Hunters," in which Mr. Spillane himself starred. Hammer stories were also featured on television in the series "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer" and in made-for-TV movies. In the 1980s, Mr. Spillane appeared in a string of Miller Lite beer commercials.

Besides the Hammer novels, Mr. Spillane wrote a dozen other books, including some award-winning volumes for young people.

As a stylist Mr. Spillane was no innovator; the prose was hard-boiled boilerplate. In a typical scene, from "The Big Kill," Hammer slugs out a little punk with "pig eyes."

Born Frank Morrison Spillane on March 9, 1918, in Brooklyn, Mr. Spillane attended Fort Hayes State College in Kansas before beginning his career writing for magazines.

He had always liked police stories and in his pre-Hammer days he created a comic-book detective named Mike Danger. At the time, the early 1940s, he was scribing for Batman, SubMariner and other comics.

"I wanted to get away from the flying heroes, and I had the prototype cop," Mr. Spillane said.

Danger never saw print. After World War II, Mr. Spillane needed $1,000 to buy some land and thought of writing to make money. Within three weeks, he had completed "I, the Jury" and sent it to Dutton. The editors there doubted the writing, but not the market for it; a literary franchise began.

Mr. Spillane was a quintessential Cold War writer, an unconditional believer in good and evil. He was also a rare political conservative in the book world. Communists were villains in his work, and liberals took some hits as well.

"Spillane is like eating takeout fried chicken: so much fun to consume, but you can feel those lowlife grease-induced zits rising before you've finished the first drumstick," Sally Eckhoff wrote in the liberal weekly The Village Voice.

Married three times, Mr. Spillane was the father of four.