I, the Jury

The first of Spillane's Mike Hammer series, and my trial replacement for Raymond Chandler's Marlowe series (admittedly I still have a couple to go in that, but I worry for the future).

Hammer is a tough-guy who I remember from my childhood as Stacy Keach - despite me being slightly too young at the time to understand all that was going on on tv. I guess I liked him because my dad did, and Hammer had a bunch of good lines and always won out in the end. I enjoyed this book, and have a few more in the series, so can rest a little easy for the completion of Marlowe.

Spillane weaves a story with interesting and varied characters, rolls out a story as Hammer works his way through it, and the bodies pile up. At some level the murderer becomes more obvious as the story goes on, not because of the evidence becoming available, but due to the story line. I won't spoil it here, but if you have read it you will probably know where I am coming from.

This was written in 1947, so there will be objections to this book if you are unable to separate that time from now. Casual racism, obvious sexism, beatings to obtain information - did I mention sexism? Hammer is a ladies man, and he kisses the dames when he needs to (or wants to, or both, or because he can't seem to resist).

I enjoy these books as light relief reading - they work for me in short bursts, 20 minutes here 30 minutes there. You don't lose track, or have to go back for detail (unless you want to) and the story just rolls out. I don't feel obliged to solve the story - the reader isn't always provided with enough clues to do so correctly - although as above this one became clear.

4 stars

If you can get past the sexism and racism that this book was filled with, there's a good little detective story in here. That being said, there is a lot of stuff in here that a lot of people would find offensive (I had to keep reminding myself “consider the historical context!”)
What's really interesting, though, is that Spillaine's Mike Hammer was the prototype of the super-macho action movie protagonist of the 1970s and 1980s. It's easy to forget how rooted in noir that character type is, and I think that by doing so we are left with an incomplete understanding of it.