Book Review
I, the Jury
MICKEY SPILLANE (1918–2006) was an American crime novelist best known for creating Mike Hammer, the hard-boiled private detective who became an icon of postwar noir. With his terse prose, relentless violence, and uncompromising style, Spillane transformed the detective novel and became one of the bestselling crime writers of the twentieth century.
I woke up to the alarm clock at 5 am and did 100 knuckle pushups on the sidewalk outside the apartment building. In the rain. There were some fancy boys “jogging” and I glared a contemptuous good morning to them.
I am going to keep it a buck with you kid, I really am tired right now and this review might be riddled with errors and typos, but kid I have been in the game long enough to know that if I don’t do it now, I won’t do it anytime in the future, time is scarce kid.
For a detective novel that came out in ‘47 this was a really interesting read, riddled with all the stereotyping and the iconic assemblage of the noir. I really loved how short the chapters were and how our protagonist Mike Hammer the hard-boiled tough guy private eye goes about solving crime. Even the way the phrases he uses, they seem so dumb but go to show how much of a tough guy he is
“Listen, pimple face. Just for the fun of it I ought to slap your fuzzy chin all around this room, but I got things to do. Don’t go playing man when you’re only a boy. You’re pretty big, but I’m three sizes bigger and a hell of a lot tougher and I’ll beat the living daylights out of you if you try anything funny again. Now sit down over there.”
but sometimes you do get some interesting thoughts and pieces from the simples phrases
“My main joy in living is living.”
Hammer is one of the oldies with his ideals and principles, and for some reason every girl has her eyes on him.
“Nothing doing. No wife of mine is going to work. I want her at home where I know where she is.”
There is a lot to say about this book, but one thing for sure, Mickeys prose is not dense and the short chapters and the fast paced story telling makes it an interesting read, I don’t rate my books because I feel that is limiting but if I had to rate this book it would be a 3 out of 5 definitely on the recommend scale to people but only in certain cases, and its interesting at how this inspired all the other hard-boiled tough guys hollywood brewed as we know them.