Here’s what Jason Starr, one of the top dogs of contemporary noir, wrote about discovering the work of Jim Thompson through A SWELL-LOOKING BABE: “The writing was clear and fast-paced, and it didn’t take itself too seriously. It was hilarious and disgusting at the same time, and it had an enjoyable, nasty edge that made you feel dirty but good. It was definitely the type of page-turner you don’t forget about a day or two after you read it.”

Which is pretty much word for word how I’d describe Allan Guthrie’s third novel, HARD MAN.

Guthrie is a bright light among tough-guy writers from Scotland – their stuff is being called “tartan noir” – but that bright light is red and flashing and on top of a police car and you better not ask for whom the light flashes because if it flashes for you, you’re in for a world of hurt.

How’s this for an opening: “Another hot day in July. That was four in a row. Pretty good for Scotland. Not so good for the corpse in the boot. Jacob Baxter put his hand over his nose to mask the smell, forgetting for a moment that his nose was broken.”

That’s how HARD MAN is going to run for the next 267 pages: brief, bare-bones descriptions of unpleasant things, black humor, and enough pain to make the Marquis de Sade holler “No mas!”

It seems that May – Jacob’s teen daughter – has gotten pregnant, and not by her husband, the psychotic Wallace. No, her lover – who will come to think of himself as Jesus – is a poet, of all things, and when he finds out that Wallace wants to chat with him about their dilemma, he chooses as his weapon of choice a one-way bus ticket out of town. Fat lot of good that’ll do him; Wallace is a hard man to avoid.

So Jacob and his two numb-nuts sons decide that they are going to need help if they want to keep May safe, and they turn to a local ex-con named Pearce to serve as her bodyguard. Unfortunately for them, Pearce has just lost his dearly beloved mum and wants to spend his days walking his dog, a male three-legged beastie named Hilda.

Pearce turns down the job several times, but then Hilda vanishes and Pearce is certain that Wallace made the snatch in order to prove his toughness and convince the saddened dog owner to mind his own business. And one of Jacob’s sons gets both kneecaps shot off, which means less to Pearce than the disappearance of Hilda, but it’s still indicative of Wallace’s excessive frame of mind.

If you spend too much time examining the book’s plot, you’ll discover that it is structured like a farce, sort of like Noel Coward, but with the added attractions of ultraviolence (shootings, knives stuck in necks, crucifixion, etc.), sociopathology and enough cursing to make David Mamet blush.

HARD MAN is one twisted, gruesome, profane and very funny ghost train to hell and gone. Besides, how can you not love a book that so clearly understands what’s wrong with the world we live in?

“’It’s okay, Davey,’ Pearce said to the kid. ‘The bad man’s gone.’ He closed his eyes. He was a liar.” –Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.