Blood Oath; I, the Jury

I really enjoyed Linda Fairstein's latest Alexandra Cooper novel. I love how much more respectful and kind Alex and Mike are, now that they're living together. Their "playful" banter before made me uncomfortable, I didn't find it flirty at all.
At any rate, I have to admit, I was disappointed that Alex's boss's death wasn't a plot, I wanted to know who killed Paul and why, but she had a small aside in the book that the murdered was caught and that was that. Okay? Maybe she'll come back to it.
On Alex's first day back at work after recovering from her dramatic kidnapping (and standing next to her boss when he was shot and killed) a young woman shows up in Alex's office, claiming one of the men who is in the running for the D.A. position raped her during a trial he prosecuted. The young lady was underage at the time. Alex is handling a bombshell with this one, because everyone assumes *she's* going to run for D.A. now that Paul is dead, and what better way to get her strongest opponent out of the way then to prosecute him for rape? Alex keeps insisting she's not interested in being D.A., but no one believes that. Not to mention she has zero physical evidence and the young woman has a long history about being deceitful. It was quite a good read.

I was in the mood for some old-school Mickey Spillane, so I reread an oldie but a goodie: "I, the Jury". It was so short, I'd forgotten how short it was. He managed to cram quite a lot in there, though. One of Mike's good friends from the war, Jack, has been brutally murdered. Mike vows vengeance and proceeds to investigate. More people are murdered with the same .45, and someone is even dumb enough to take a shot at Mike. He actually becomes engaged to a doctor named Charlotte Manning (TEAM VELDA!) but it doesn't work out for reasons I don't want to spoil. All in all it was just perfect Mike Hammer. It's funny how controversial these books were when they were first published, it seems so quaint and tame now.