3 out of 5

HCC-015

‘Gutter’ is pretty much what I would’ve assumed pulp novels read like before I read any of them.  It has a basic dime-store quality to it without the bite, a sorta soft-boiled detective novel (chuckle), like a Law and Order episode compared to the hard-boiled grit of something like The Wire.  And it’s honestly not that great.  The lead character’s ‘haunted past’ is sorta’ shrug-worthy, McBain is obsessed with chicks with big boobs, and the killer is pretty much exactly who you think it is.  But, it remains entertaining due to the freaking sizzling language, this pure jive talk from the era that just feels so slick.  And when McBain isn’t slobbering over a dame, he does write some damn fine descriptions of a scene or situation, using that gangster / PI slang without missing a beat.  Plus, a pretty brave downbeat ending – womp – helps it to end on a high note.

So disgraced private eye Matt Cordell is hangin’ out on a park bench, drinkin’, when up walks his old pal Johnny Bridges, who asks him for help checking in to some thefts at his tailor shop.  Matt hems and haws… bad memories of the old days, but he agrees.  They stop by the shop, they find a dead body, and Johnny’s gettin’ thrown in jail fer murder.  But Matt knows it wasn’t him.  So this drunken bum is going to take up the gumshoe job once again, meanwhile gettin’ wrapped up with busty dames and their sisters and maybe some old PI and cop buddies also, who don’t take kindly to Matt coming out of retirement.

Our introduction to Matt is awesome.  He’s truly homeless – stays at flophouses, he stinks, he ain’t shaven, he’ll spend every dollar on drink – and McBain’s cynical observations of NY around Cooper Union (vai Matt) are disgustingly spot on, even half a freaking century later.  The introduction to Johnny and the discovery of the body feel a little hokey, a little too ‘it only happens this way in the books,’ but it flows, and sort of has a light-hearted charm to it.  But I found the book quickly starts to wander when it explores Matt’s past, because it suddenly renders events… unimportant.  Matt’s ‘disgrace’ is because he beat up a dude who was makin’ it with his wife.  Didn’t almost kill him, it wasn’t a client – it was a dude bangin’ his wife, and they fought.  I’m not all about fisticuffs, but this is enough to cause disgrace in the big city?  And McBain – who must’ve just loved the ladies, for all the romanticizing he does whenever describing any chick in the book – starts to include these mopey memories of Matt’s 2-month-long marriage, and it’s just not weighty.  That bum now doesn’t seem justified in his bum-ness.  I’m a totally isolationist misogynist, so I don’t get women, but I don’t get how this short-lived relationship that just ended in cheating and divorce – not death, not… I dunno, some excessive betrayal where she slept with his father or something… I don’t get how it ruins the guy to the extent in which he’s portrayed.  Could I get it, if it had been pitched differently?  Sure.  But the way it’s related to us, I’m not sold.

And unfortunately, the rest of the book is tainted by this.  It’s hard to take the murder seriously, the Johnny Bridges character pretty much completely disappears, and even a beating Matt gets – a vicious beating – feels relatively unimportant, and hey, let’s go catch a jazz show.

When Matt’s on the case, ‘Gutter’ is a quick read, and its god damn snappy lingo is such a blast that it carries you through some weaker plotting.  But when McBain has his character reminisce about an unconvincing past, the book drags.  Thankfully it balances out enough and is short enough to be a pleasant read, and Ed swings back around for a successful epilogue that matches the more grounded and gritty feel of our intro to the story.

Also, I don’t get the title, but it sounds like McBain changed it for republication through HCC, so I guess it’s onea’ them ‘in hindsight, this is what I’d name it’ deals, where, like, I name this review AWESOME JUST LIKE ALL MY REVIEWS