A Fan Letter From Mickey Spillane
Just in case anybody doubts that Spillane’s Mike Hammer was inspired by Carroll John Daly’s Race Williams, check this out:
The story goes (at least as far as Spillane told it) that when Daly’s agent at the time saw the letter, she instituted a plagiarism suit. Whereupon Daly canned her because he hadn’t gotten a fan letter in years and he sure as hell wasn’t about to sue anybody who had actually taken the time to write one.
It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Daly had taken Spillane up on his offer.