3 out of 5

HCC-031

Brilliantly bleak and surprisingly progressive in some regards, David Goodis’ The Wounded and the Slain is curiously constructed – initially to its detriment, but, when it finally leans into some momentum, quite effective – but ultimately acts as more of a place to perhaps work through some of the writer’s personal issues versus constructing something truly fitting for the Hard Case Crime treatment.  It’s still an interesting bit of dimestore fiction, even if the end result feels rather mixed-message.

James and Cora are on vacation in Jamaica.  What at first seems like it’s going to be our stereotypical noir setup – brittle wife, unhappy man, femme fatale woos him away – is interestingly shifted early on: James is unhappy, and Cora is brittle, but it’s something they’ve sort of grown in to after a long while.  James still wants to love his wife; Cora wants – we think – to be able to be loved, but she has trouble expressing herself, and anyway, James is now always drunk…  Even the faux-sheen that a couple would initially present in this setup is immediately done away with this dose of relationship reality.  And James is deep over the edge – he’s not a respectable drunk; he’s not witty; he’s not played off as being particularly anything too admirable – he just seems to be unable to help himself from digging further into a ditch of depression.  A little expression of hope will work through his haze… but Cora is unable to give him anything in return.  And as she watches her husband be carted back to their room and a failed fight with another patron, she begins having these haunting, frightening – or alluring? – thoughts of another man; an aggressive pursuer.

This is interesting stuff, but it’s also slight in some ways; Goodis somewhat traces James’ and Cora’s history together, but his male lead – the POV switches – gets a lot more leeway and explanation to his story; although Cora is given more (internal) emotion and intelligence than most females in the genre, she’s still only presented to really give James something to play off of, and to set up a particular “masculine” type – the type in her daydreams – to which she feels attracted.  Goodis, in other words, clearly has some issues he’s working through here, which would seem to align with themes in his other works.

Still, it’s a uniquely backwards way to approach the eventual story, which occurs when James’ depression gives way to utter desolution: he goes on a drunken, blackout binge on the not-friendly-to-tourists Kingston streets, and finds himself embroiled in very not-friendly matters.  The lead up to this is is a bit repetitive, taking up half the book for James kicking himself while down until the above happens, but the buildup thereafter is intriguing in hot flashes: he ropes Cora into his troubles; she sinks deeper into her own obsessions; he spends further mad nights out on the streets.  Goodis hits on some very strong and very bleak stuff here – though, again, mirroring what I assume are his conflicted thoughts on men and women and sex – and navigates to a page-turning ending, if one that seems rather short-sighted for what’s mostly a deep-dive character study and not so much a pulp book.

The Wound and The Slain stands out in a good way amongst HCC, though, a sidestep from their usual fare and a good way to introduce jokers like me to another possibly overlooked writer.