Review: I, The Jury

I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I remember watching Stacy Keach’s Mike Hammer on television when it was first run, back in the 80s. At the time, I was a fan of what seemed to be the more cerebral tough guy detectives, like Lew Archer, the Continental Op, Philip Marlowe, and the like. I got the impression, from the tv show or from the reviews I had read, that Spillane was “working class” in terms of writing and in terms of his detective. I found in reading “I, the Jury” that that is true, but like many writers that found popularity, the tone has a way of growing on you. This certainly had more violence than the others, and more deeply described to almost a comic-book level. It also had more sex than I recall compared to the others mentioned, but Hammer is still kind of a one girl guy here. He’s got sex on his mind, enough to think about it a lot but not enough to do anything about it beside propose. I’m sure this was racy for the 40s, when written, but seems very tame compared to stuff, say, from the 60s. Nowadays, this book as written would be too tame for an HBO series, though it certainly isn’t Disney material either. I will read more in this series, at least to see how the writing grows as the author ages and how the characters reflect the times.

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