Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer

When a man convicted of armed robbery is mortally wounded in a prison knife fight, he calls on Hammer to perform a last service - retrieve the loot he hid before he was arrested and use the money to ransom his wife who has been kidnapped.

After discovering his office has been ransacked, Mike receives a threatening phone call ordering him off "the case" and to drop his client, Sharon OCloskey. Mike refuses, even though he wasnt working on a case and didnt have a client named OCloskey. When the mysterious client calls and invites the private investigator to her room, Mike quickly agrees, only to fall victim to drugged meal. When he awakens, he discovers hes in Las Vegas and his beautiful client claims he flew to Nevada willingly to help her find her missing father.

Mike responds to a phone call from a small-time junkie requesting protection too late; he finds his friend shot to death in a Chinatown alley. Not satisfied that the police will exert themselves to find the mans killer, Mike launches his own investigation and links the crime to an earlier unsolved murder.

While eating in a hotel restaurant, Mike spots a man take a package from a womans table. Even though the package contains a necklace with a broken clasp as the man claimed, Mike smells foul play and traces the woman who left the box. When he arrives at her house, he learns that she was pushed down her stairs and badly injured. Investigating further, he discovers she is the victim of a vicious blackmailer.

Mike is hired to find the murderer of a newspaper reporter. The trail leads to a ballroom whose hostesses, usually small-town girls with no relatives, frequently disappear.

Mike is hired to retrieve incriminating letters from a blackmailer, but soon learns that the package with $50,000 was really the ransom money to payoff kidnappers. When the woman who collected the ransom from Hammer is double-crossed, she tries to get revenge on her partner but is killed before she can meet with the private detective. Hammer investigates the dead womans friends and co-workers to mete out his kind of justice upon the kidnapping murderer.

Mike is asked to investigate help a young man who has been arrested for murder in a small Pennsylvania town. He thinks the case against his client is pretty good, but when the local district attorney and deputy sheriff try to run him out of town, he decides to investigate further.

Taking a ferry ride in New York harbor, Mike sees a young woman crying. Shes been victimized by a carnival con artist who charges steep fees to enter a rigged talent contest.

Mike runs into an old acquaintance, the wife of an embezzler he helped send to prison, who asks for her help. When she turns up dead in her apartment, rather than in his office as scheduled, Mike investigates. Hes curious why a blue-blooded lady should arrange to bury the wife of a convict and discovers that both women are involved in a shady escort service dabbling in blackmail.

Mike is asked to help a popular disk jockey whos been threatened by a powerful music producer to play her performers songs or else. While Mike is trying to persuade the producer to back off, the disk jockey is brutally beaten, and Mike is fired as a result. When the DJ collapses from the injuries hes sustained, Mike decides hes been rehired and takes after the producer and her goons with a vengeance.

A psychiatrist fears that his patients are being blackmailed. He hires Mike to find out if his fears are founded, how the privileged information is being leaked and who is preying on his clients.

Mike is hired by a beautiful heiress to break up her fathers romance with a much younger woman. Mike goes to the womans apartment and, after interviewing her, decides it really is a May-December romance and determines to give up on the assignment. When a thug claiming to be Mike Hammer threatens the lovely lovebird with bodily harm if she doesnt give up her sugar daddy, Mike gets back on the case and investigates who would really benefit if the romance were scotched.

A rich industrialist wants to hire Mike to beat up his son and heir because the young man has become engaged to woman considered beneath the familys standing. Mike turns the job down, but agrees to drive the industrialist to the familys cabin in the Catskills where the son and his fiancée are waiting out a storm. When Mike arrives, he finds the young woman dead, bloodstains on the floor and conflicting stories about how both occurred.

Mike is hired to track down a mans missing girlfriend. The client tells Hammer that he just returned from South America, but his pasty complexion belies his claim of three years in the tropics. Hammer learns that the man is really an ex-con out on parole. Mike can understand his client hiding his criminal past, but what he really cant understand is why a powerful television anchor like Butler Tilton would hire an inept private eye like Andy Anderson to tail the former bank robber.

A man Mike helped get paroled from prison gets an anonymous letter accusing his wife of infidelity. Mike learns hes bought a gun illegally and tries to convince the ex-cons spouse to quit her glitzy job which requires her to be seen socially with a magazine editor known to have a roving eye before theres bloodshed. When the wife is found murdered and his friends gone on the lam, Mike attempts to prove that the gun his friend bought was a different caliber than the one used to commit the crime.

Mike decides to investigate when the darkroom belonging to his girlfriends brother is destroyed by someone looking for an incriminating photograph. Since the negative and all the copies of the photograph were destroyed Mike doesnt have a leads to go on, until he hires a fingerprint expert to dust the nightclub where the photographer worked. He learns that the man very interested in not having his picture taken was a racketeer who had been declared dead three years earlier when the plane he purportedly was flying in crashed and burned.

While getting a shoeshine in the Bowery, Mike spots a beautiful, well-dressed blonde who is as out of place as a field of wildflowers growing out of a crack in the concrete. When the woman is mugged in an alley, Mike comes to her aid and learns that shes searching for her husband, a blues piano player, who hasnt written to her in Wyoming in over a month. Mike traces the missing husband to a penny arcade and then follows the bodies to a fashionable apartment uptown.

Mike is hired to locate a young woman who moved to New York, but suddenly stopped writing home to her parents. Mike quickly learns that she was killed in a hit and run automobile accident, but he cant help but wonder how the young woman went from skipping out on an apartment owing two months rent live at a fashionable flat with a wad of money in her purse at the time of her death. His investigation shows that she was making ends more than meet by working as a call girl and setting up clients for a team of muggers operating out of school for actors.

Mike is hired to find the culprit behind a series of pranks at an exclusive girls prep school - students have been poisoned, burned with acid and now shot at. Mike has three suspects: an elderly caretaker who was forced to retire, a middle-aged administrator who was passed over when the new head mistress was hired by the schools Board of Trustees, and lovely student who craves attention.

A pretty secretary swims across the lake to the cabin Mike has rented for vacation and invites him to a party at her uncles estate. The party soon loses its appeal when Mike bumps into an old adversary, a lawyer who claims Mike railroaded his client by faking evidence. When the lawyer is accused of murdering his host, Mike shows the value of a fake identification to smoke out the real killer.

When an innocent man is accused of murder, Mike is hired to find the real killer of a photographer who ran a phony modelling school and dabbled in blackmail on the side.

A woman hires Mike to find the man who murdered who father, an experienced steeplejack and window-washer who fell 20 floors to his death. Mikes investigation shows that the murdered man lost a $10,000 investment with a crooked stockbroker who seems to have disappeared, leaving a hulking henchman behind to protect his interests.

Mike helps out an old friend when her husband is accused of murdering a loan shark. His investigation revealed that a number of people were interested in taking over the mobsters racket, but the crucial bit of evidence is the scent of cheap perfume Mike smells in the murdered mans apartment.

Mikes old friend Patricia Tyler calls him for help when neighborhood hoodlums vandalize her fathers grocery store. Mike sides with the hoodlums since her father was the vote that hung a jury in the murder trial of Mikes nemesis, Sam Mayo, a gangster who Mike believes killed a friend of his. When the assistant District Attorney decides to drop the case because several witnesses develop amnesia, Mike starts his own investigation - with surprising results.

Luke Lund is being blackmailed. He is a racketeer now posing as a legitimate land developer in Shale City. He lures Mike Hammer from New York and with the help of a crooked cop frames him for the murder of the blackmailer.

Hammer gets involved in political intrigue with a Colonel and two gorgeous women.

A beautiful Chinese woman asks Mike to find the man who robbed an illegal poker game held in the back of a Chinese restaurant. One of them who lost heavily has threatened her father, the restaurant owner, with bodily harm unless the money is returned within 24 hours. Mikes only clue is the masked gunman had the number "8" tattooed on the back of his left hand.

Mike is hired to dissuade a pretty blonde from blackmailing his client with a tape recording of his extra-marital indiscretions. Mike finds the woman hanging from the ceiling in her apartment and, after his client is arrested for murder, investigates other parties who had reason to want the young woman dead.

Mike investigates a $50,000 jewelry heist and double-murder for the insurance company. He gets a tip that the thief and murderer is hiding in a nearby hotel and kills the crook in a gunfight. When Mike learns that the dead man was a known jewel thief who never carried a gun, he suspects that he was tricked into shooting a man by his double-crossing partner and sets out to bring the other gunsel to justice.

A homeless man tells Mike that hes the victim of a double cross and a nice old man confesses to a murder.

Mike is hired to discretely investigate a series of attempts on the life of Carl Kunard, a successful building contractor, the most recent of which took place at the mans vacation lodge in upstate New York. Mikes suspects include Kunards unhappy business partner, his trophy wife and his resentful son. Hammers efforts are hindered by a fraternity pledge held in the lodge to escape the prying eyes of the university authorities.

Mikes hired by a nightclub owner when thugs bust up his Dixieland joint. Hes sure they were sent by the club across the street because he stole their headliner, Dixie Dee. Dixies a woman who twists men around her finger and uses them for her own gain, so when shes murdered, the list of remorseless male suspects is long.

A college girl comes to Mike saying her mother, an attractive widow, is involved with a man trying to con her out of money. Hammer confirms there are a couple of scams going on. One is being played on him by the daughter; the other involves betting on horses with the seemingly innocent characters doing the cheating.

Mikes hired by a husband and wife to investigate the murder of a family member.

A blackmailing showgirl is found murdered and one of Hammers friends is the number one suspect.

Tom ORough is severely beaten en route to Mikes office. Hes concern that Si Loomis, a small-time crook, has won the heart of his employer, Edie Sanford, and shes about to lose her money and her company to the grifter. When Mike cant force the crook to back off and cant convince the Edie that shes fallen for a criminal, he tries to use Loomis pretty young secretary to get enough evidence to break up the romance.

Am ex-con hed help send to prison makes a death threat against Mike. Believing its just a sick joke, Hammer decides to meet with the man.

A married out-of-towner is set up for a mugging in Central Park by a sexy young woman hed only met that day. Wanting his stolen briefcase back and his name out of the newspapers, the cheating husband comes to Mike for help. Ellen Robbins, whos still on probation, is running the mugging scam with her boyfriend and another thug. Matters turn deadly when she returns the briefcase for $1000 bucks and doesnt cut her cohorts in on the extra money.

An Asian nightclub singer is offered $5000 by her boyfriends snooty society mother to just disappear. She turns it down until her husband, a Merchant Marine she escaped from long ago, shows up demanding cash to go away. She shoots him in self defense, but doesnt kill him. Mike believes her story and works to clear her of a murder charge.