Re: RARA-AVIS: VENGEANCE IS MINE

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 02 Dec 2004


Richard,

Re your comments below:
 
> I too found I, THE JURY on rereading to suck big
> time. All that
> remained was the additude and the ending that was
> not completely
> stupid. VENGEANCE IS MINE I read soon after and it
> is a far better example of Spillane's work.

I sometimes wonder whether Spillane's critical reputation is due to the fact that most of the people who hate him never read anything by him but I THE JURY.

I read I THE JURY as a freshman in high school, and thought it was dreck. I didn't read another Spillane for years.

When writers and critics I respected, Al Collins perhaps at the forefront, I read some of the others and was surprised to find out how much I liked them.

Could I have been wrong, I wondered, about I THE JURY?
 I reread and found my initial judgment validated. Great opening chapter. Great closing chapter. But everything in-between is, as I thought, dreck.

On the other hand, everything else he did in those first few furious years of production is, and remains, compulisively readable. If there's ever another Mike Hammer, I'll be there waiting in line to get it.

JIM DOHERTY

                
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