Kiss Her Goodbye

It's been a while since I've read a Hard Case Crime novel, so I continue with Kiss Her Goodbye, by Allan Guthrie, an original set in gritty Edinburgh, Scotland (with a stop off in the Orkney Islands, a rare location for a pulp crime book).

The book details a few very rough days in the life of Joe Hope, who is university educated but works as an enforcer for a local loan shark. Though this is Scotland, baseball bats are at a premium, as they are the principal implements in Joe's line of work (apparently cricket bats aren't as effective). Joe has a daughter, a young woman, who has gone off to the Orkneys to work for his wife's cousin. But when she commits suicide that's just the first bad bit of news for Joe. When he goes off to Orkney to interrogate the cousin (after inquiring about a sporting goods store to buy a bat) he is arrested for his wife's murder. Someone has set Joe up.

The book is moderately engaging but doesn't quite hang together. Who is framing Joe is apparent from the outset, and thus the book is not as much a whodunit but a how-will-our-hero-get-out-of-this-alive situation. It's a trim length, but there's too much padding, particularly involving the cousin and his mooning over an assistant. What works best is the descriptions of the layabouts that make up most of the characters: Joe, his boss Cooper, and a prostitute Joe hangs with called Tina, who is also pretty handy with a bat.

The writing could have stood a stronger edit. There were too many times when the narrative shifted without proper transition. Still, a fairly effective crime story.