I, the Jury was published by E. P. Dutton in 1947, written in nineteen days (Spillane later claimed nine). It sold 6.5 million copies in the United States alone during the 1950s, making Spillane the bestselling American author of the decade — outselling Hemingway, Faulkner, and every literary novelist combined. The book was reviewed with revulsion by critics and consumed with enthusiasm by readers.
Mike Hammer’s friend Jack Williams — a one-armed war veteran — is found shot dead in his apartment. Hammer makes a vow: he will find the killer and execute them personally, regardless of law, due process, or the niceties that keep civilization from descending into vengeance. The investigation takes him through New York’s underworld and overworld — strip clubs, Park Avenue apartments, psychiatrists’ offices, boxing gyms — and the identity of the killer, when revealed on the final page, produces one of the most infamous endings in American fiction.
Spillane’s innovation was to strip the hardboiled detective of Chandler’s melancholy and Hammett’s irony and replace them with rage. Hammer is not conflicted about violence — he enjoys it. He is not ambivalent about justice — he defines it as personal vengeance. He is not haunted by the world’s corruption — he burns through it with the simplicity of a flamethrower.
The critical establishment despised the book (and everything Spillane wrote afterward) for what they perceived as its celebration of violence, its crude sexuality, and its authoritarian politics. The reading public made it one of the bestselling books of the century.
Collecting I, the Jury
First edition (E. P. Dutton, New York, 1947): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $500–$2,000
- Signed first edition: $1,000–$3,000
- Without jacket: $30–$80
- Signet paperback first (1948): $10–$30