HAMMER TIME! My beautiful daughter just gave me two volumes of Mickey Spillane "Mike Hammer" novels. Love 'em. Just re-read I the Jury, which I first read in paperback about 30 years ago. Most critics dismiss Spillane as a hack Raymond Chandler really hated him. And yes, if you have any traces of political correctness in you, you'll probably recoil. But I love his style - tough and gritty. I have an iTunes playlist called "Crime Jazz" I play when I read this stuff.

Sorry I'm a little late in responding to this, but I also have a single volume collection of the first three Mike Hammer novels.  They're interesting, and I'm sure they were shocking for their time, but nowadays they seem kind of quaint.  I feel the same way about Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.

 

BTW, did you ever see the movie version of "I, the Jury," with Armande Assante, which was released in the early 80s?  I really liked that movie. 

Haha, Yes, even the book cover is "politcally incorrect" - I like.