I, the Jury

If you can get past the sexism and racism that this book was filled with, there's a good little detective story in here. That being said, there is a lot of stuff in here that a lot of people would find offensive (I had to keep reminding myself “consider the historical context!”)
What's really interesting, though, is that Spillaine's Mike Hammer was the prototype of the super-macho action movie protagonist of the 1970s and 1980s. It's easy to forget how rooted in noir that character type is, and I think that by doing so we are left with an incomplete understanding of it.