You have to love a novel that begins with the lines, “The name is Cordell. I’m a drunk.” There are no two ways about it; you have to.
That novel is THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE, Ed McBain’s all-but-lost 1958 noir detective yarn, now lovingly rescued from obscurity by Hard Case Crime. Its hero, Matt Cordell, was a successful private investigator until he caught his wife in the arms of one of his employees. Now he’s just a homeless, alcoholic bum who panhandles simply to keep the booze flowing through his veins.
He’s reluctantly lured back into his old line of work when Johnny Bridges, a friend he hasn’t seen in 10 years, finds him in a park and asks him to look into a perceived cash register shortage at Bridges’ tailor shop. When they arrive at the shop, they find Bridges’ partner shot dead, with Bridges’ initials written on the wall in blood. Thus begins a complex plot (but simply written, of course) of murder, revenge and mistaken identity, with a cast that includes three femme fatales, untold shots of hooch and an equal number of old wounds.
McBain (who passed away this past July) was an old pro when it came to crime stories and GUTTER is early proof, a real electrifying read. The plotting is characteristically tight, but his dialogue is so crisp, it crackles. Through the direct, first-person narration, he makes you care about Cordell – no small feat given an apparent absence of redeeming qualities – leaving you no choice but to be utterly wrapped up in the tangled web that is his investigation. For pure, flawed-hero detective fiction, this is the real deal. Of the handful of Hard Case Crime books I’ve read so far, this one easily shares the top spot with Lawrence Block’s THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART. Both illustrate that they don’t make ‘em like they used to, but GUTTER is more bittersweet since McBain is no longer around to make any at all.
Related posts:
- Posthumous McBain collection coming
- Hooch begets Hard Case Crime line
- BOOK WHORE >> 11.22.05
- Hard Case Crime introduces book club
- Transgressions
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