I, The Jury: 2 1/2 ( )

Gripping stuff, fast paced dialogue and just enough clues so you are almost there with the same deductions. Made me buy the next volume ( )

For I, the Jury -
Synopsis: Jack Williams, Mike Hammer’s war buddy and savior, is gunned down in his own home. The crime scene reveals a sadistic killer who actually toyed with the victim before death. There are plenty of suspects to chose from and Mike must use his wits and his mitts to find the killer and gun him down.

OK, so I wrote that myself. I especially like the bit about the mitts. He actually uses the term in the novel and it cracked me up. The language in general had me laughing a lot. Very dated and very idiomatic. Full of rods and mitts, dames and mugs. Absolutely great. It’s a shame that Spillane’s style has been imitated and parodied so much over the last 60 years that the original comes off as clichéd. I loved it just the same. I cannot help but compare Spillane to Chandler because Chandler is what I know and I’m such a fan.

Hammer is not the thoughtful private eye that Marlowe is. Neither is he as tortured. Hammer is much more straight up and in your face. His first instinct is to beat the answer out of someone rather than to coerce or deduce. He tells his buddy Pat, the lead homicide detective in the case, that he intends to beat him to the killer and plug him full of lead. Despite this, Hammer is given great leeway in the case and all information between Mike and Pat is shared and on the square.

Hammer novels have a lot more straight-up action in them as compared to Marlowe novels. There are no side tracks for considered insights, observations or quiet chats. Just clue, chase, crime scene, chase, clue, fight, shootout, clue, crime scene, chase, etc. More violence, too. I guess they go hand in hand. The pace is absolutely pedal to the metal and takes place in only a few days. I wish though that Spillane had given us more of Hammer’s character before plunging us right into the thick of things. Hammer is out for revenge, but except for a sentence or two, I don’t have a good idea why. Jack saved his life in the war, but that was years ago and doesn’t really mean they were friends. Still, he’s off on a mission to kill the killer.

There is a lot of sexiness, but not any sex; at least not in this one. Mike comes close a couple of times with a couple of women, but doesn’t go all the way. Not for lack of trying on the women’s parts though. Oh how they want a little Hammer time.

I’ve heard it that Spillane is a misogynist and a chauvinist pig, and that may have been so, but in this genre it is par for the course and there was some of it, but not as much as I was led to believe. Maybe in later novels it’s worse, but in this one most of the women were dealt with fairly by Hammer. He used them and they used him in return. Velda, his secretary, pines for him, but he treats her right and doesn’t take advantage the way he could if he were a lesser man. Myrna, Jack’s fiancé is an object of pity and remorse and is not victimized by Hammer in any way.

I have a feeling that these will become monotonous if I read a whole bunch of them close together, but I think if I space them out, I can get as much pleasure out of the two other Mike Hammer novels I have as I did this one.