My Gun Is Quick But Google's Quicker

Now that that Harry Potter dame has confessed all, and the sales of her "Oops, I never meant for you to find out" mystery novel have skyrocketed, the time has come for me to admit that I, Mickey Spillane, better known as the feared, and let's face it, venerated tough guy author of Kiss Me, Deadly, have been masquerading as children's book writer Susan Beth Pfeffer for the past 45 years.

Yeah, it was me, the feared, and let's face it, venerated, author of I, The Jury and The Girl Hunters, who wrote Evvie At Sixteen and Meg Makes A Friend.

At first, the deception was easy enough for a feared, and let's face it, venerated tough guy author such as myself. I picked the name of some going nowhere NYU student, and began to write Just Morgan. Just Morgue is more my style, but what you think is a joke ends up being a secondary income you come to depend on for those little things in life like private jets and acting lessons.

But as the years progressed, the lies piled on top of lies. It wasn't enough to be some NYU grad with no past and not much of a present. I had to flesh my creation out. Not that kind of girly voluptuous flesh I'm used to creating either. More like nearsighted and dumpy with hair that goes nowhere. Just to keep from going crazy, I added a few details. 101 year old mother. Grandfather who was a rabbi in Transylvania. Make believe friends with funny names like Marci.

The giveaway was the phony cat Scooter. An homage, as my French worshippers, would say, to my gal pal Ayn Rand.

Not really a cat

 By now everybody knows she spent 1941-1956  (with a little time off for WW II) playing shortstop for the New York Yankees under the moniker Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto. "Aynie sweetie," I said to her once. "Why shortstop? Why not center field?"

She lowered her seduce me eyes. "Even an Objectivist dame needs to lay down a sacrifice sometimes," she moaned.

I hadn't counted on that Booklist reviewer being on the one to blow my cover. But when she called The Shade Of The Moon "brutal," it was game, set, and murder. You google "Mickey Spillane" + brutal, you got 289,000 different places to call your own. "Susan Beth Pfeffer" + brutal nets you less than half that. Anyone with a search box and a gat was going to know.

Oh well. 45 years was a good run.  'Course I'll never match the Marquis de Sade's record of 145 years masquerading as Louisa May Alcott. The old kinkmeister always liked his broads little!