I, the Jury - Inscribed - Mickey Spillane 1947 - E. P. Dutton &, New York - First Edition I don't want to arrest anyone. I just want to shoot somebody.

First edition, with bookplate inscribed ‘
Hi – Great to say hello! Mickey Spillane’. The first appearance of Mike Hammer, World War II veteran, Ultra X Hard-Boiled P.I., who sets out to avenge the death of his war buddy, following a trail that becomes a Spillane trademark, vengeance, violence, sex, a blonde, and nothing stands in his way, not the cops, the gangsters, or the blonde.

The roar of the .45 shook the room. Charlotte staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to truth. Slowly, she looked down at the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in.
"How c-could you?" she gasped.
I had only a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.
"It was easy," I said.
  Frank Morrison ‘Mickey’ Spillane (1918-2006) born Brooklyn, New York City. Spillane started writing while at high school. During the Second World War, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and became a fighter pilot and instructor. He wrote his first novel, I, the Jury (1947), in six weeks in order to raise the money to buy a house, it sold six and a half million copies in the USA, and introduced Spillane's most famous character, hardboiled PI Mike Hammer. Spillane wrote five more Hammer novels before becoming a Jehova’s witness in 1952, a decade later he returned to Hammer, starting with The Girl Hunters. By 1980 the US all-time fiction best-seller list of fifteen titles boasted seven by Spillane, and more than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally. He was uniformly disliked by critics, owing to the high content of sex and violence in his books. However, he was later praised by American mystery writers Max Alan Collins and William L. DeAndrea, as well as artist Markus Lüpertz, and In 1995 he was named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America. The novelist Ayn Rand, a friend of Spillane's, appreciated the black-and-white morality of his books. Spillane remained an active Jehovah's Witness.

Octavo (20.9 x 14.5 cm). pp. 218, [6]. In publisher's black cloth, red lettering to spine and front board. Dust jacket price clipped.
  Condition: Near fine, light foxing to endpapers and top edge, one or two finger marks to pages, in very good minus price-clipped dust jacket, staining to rear panel, chips to spine ends, and some small closed tears to edges, red to spine faded, front panel bright.   Ref: 109091   Price: HK$ 4,500