Which Mike Hammer Book Should You Read First?

Start with I, the Jury, Mickey Spillane’s first published Mike Hammer novel. The 1947 mystery opens with the murder of Hammer’s friend Jack Williams, and Hammer takes the case with a particular outcome already in mind. If you came to the books through Stacy Keach’s TV portrayal, the debut is the quickest way to hear Hammer’s voice on the page. If Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly brought you here, the novel behind the film is a good place to jump in.

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Why I, the Jury is the best place to start

Jack Williams saved Hammer’s life during World War II. When Jack is murdered, Hammer decides that finding the killer is his responsibility and that so is handing down the punishment. The title tells you how much authority he’s willing to claim for himself.

The first-person narration makes the case more interesting than its setup might suggest. Hammer knows his own streets and reads people quickly, yet his certainty about what they deserve can get ahead of what he actually knows. Part of the pleasure is watching him work a room while wondering how much you trust the man telling you what happened in it.

Expect blunt violence and the sexual attitudes of midcentury pulp. If you finish the debut curious about what Hammer does when a case takes him beyond his own grudges, My Gun Is Quick is the natural follow-up.

What to read after I, the Jury

In My Gun Is Quick, a woman Hammer meets turns up dead after an apparent hit-and-run. He starts by looking into one death and ends up investigating a New York prostitution ring. Read this one next if you want a case that opens up the city a little more with each lead.

Vengeance Is Mine! gives Hammer a different problem. He wakes in a hotel room with a dead acquaintance and a gap in his memory. The death is ruled a suicide and Hammer loses his private investigator’s license, but he keeps digging. It’s the strongest alternate starting point if the premise you want is a detective who has to investigate a case in which he was a suspect.

If you already want to read all three, the Berkley paperback of The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume I puts them in one book. Look for ISBN 9780451203526. For a single-book trial, I, the Jury is also available as a standalone ebook from Berkley.

Can you start with Kiss Me Deadly?

Yes. Spillane’s sixth Hammer novel gives you a case you can follow from its opening encounter with a woman fleeing danger. If you know the 1955 film, look at what the book does with that same roadside setup. Aldrich and screenwriter A. I. Bezzerides take it toward Cold War paranoia, while Spillane’s story leads Hammer into a fight with organized crime.

If you want Cold War intrigue in the books themselves, pick One Lonely Night. It starts with a judge questioning Hammer’s methods and sends him from a nighttime encounter on a bridge into an espionage case. The opening gives you a rare moment to see what happens when someone makes Hammer account for the way he works.

The first six Mike Hammer books in publication order

Berkley’s first collection covers books one through three. The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume II contains books four through six and lists the final novel as Kiss Me, Deadly.

Why is Killing Town also called the first Mike Hammer book?

Spillane began the manuscript that became Killing Town in the mid-1940s. Max Allan Collins completed it decades later, and Titan Books published it in 2018. That makes it an early manuscript with a much later publication date. Read I, the Jury to meet the Hammer readers got in 1947, then come back to Killing Town if you’re curious about how the character began to take shape.

If one case is enough to send you looking for another hard-boiled detective, try 5 Classic Detective Novels to Read After Stacy Keach’s Mike Hammer.

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