3 crampons out of 5

“Kiss Her Goodbye” is part of the Hard Case Crime series, number 008 to be all numbery.  HCC produces some lovely, inexpensive, pulpy noir-crime things, mass-market paperback size, generally previously unpublished or long-since published works by respected authors from the genre or classy up-and-comers.  They all have these awesome dime-store covers and for those of us who love books on shelves, all the spines have the same typeface and coloring scheme so they look super sweet lined up.

When I first glanced at Allan Guthrie’s “Kiss Her Goodbye” I was a little worried – there’s a positive blurb from Jason Starr on the back, and the introduction to our main character – Joe Hope, a bookie’s enforcer, the scene detailing him beating a client of his boss – was a bit heavy on the language and swagger.  Starr’s HCC books weren’t exactly to my taste: I appreciate his approach, but often I was reading stories that were completely full of unlikeable characters.  The best noir / crime, for me, has a brittle lead, for sure, but there’s some underlying sense of momentum or honor that encourages us to be on his or her side, and that was absent in our introduction.  So with these initial two hints casting a bias over my reading of “Kiss Her,” I thought I was again heading into unlikeable territory.

But that’s not giving writer Guthrie nearly enough credit.  While the initial introduction to our principles and the setup is rough, soon we’re given so much EXTRA to flesh out Joe and his background that things come alive, and you’re hating the end of your subway ride for tearing you away from the story.

Here’s the gist:  Joe works for Cooper, his best friend.  After this opening, Joe’s relaxing at Cooper’s house, thinking about how much he dislikes his wife, Ruth, who keeps calling him.  When he gets home, he finds out why: their daughter, Gemma, who left home a few months ago to live at a writer’s retreat with her cousin, has died.  Suicide.  Joe sets out to discover the Why and ends up getting accused of murder.  This occurs over 40 pages or so, with lots of death threats and crass talk.  Joe’s connection to his daughter (which drives him the whole book) seems sudden, and the intensity with which he thinks about his family remains sort of discordant with his character throughout the story, but ends up being part of the package that edges this book into a unique experience.

The first giveaway that Guthrie had more to his style than swear words was, for me, during a taxi ride the main character takes.  The driver has a thick accent which is written phonetically before Joe deciphers it.  Guthrie writes the driver’s words, then takes a couple sentences to explain Joe’s quick physical evaluation of the man before returning Joe’s thoughts to understanding the words and responding.  The norm, I think, would be to sequence that differently – the words, decipher it, then describe the man, or perhaps the description occurs before the bundle.  But the way it’s written felt very true to life and true to Joe – the words distract him from his world at which point he eyeballs the guy.  Only after he’s made his judgments can he respond.  Little pieces like this make me love or hate writers, and Guthrie consistently surprised me in this manner throughout.

Joe is a very complicated personality.  One we end up ultimately siding with.  Which is why it’s too bad that everything ends up boiling down to a rather simple and predictable confrontation by the tale’s end.  There are still a couple pieces in the story that I can’t figure out on a first read if they were red herrings or just dressing, but up until the last chapter I kept expecting there to be one more detail than was revealed.  All the same, an above average book by a writer I’ll definitely keep an eye out for.

Blogger's rendition of cover (may or may not reflect actual cover art)