CRY ME A KILLER is my first experience of Garrity and I
suspect it'll be my last. Before the novel begins, Garrity
indicates what's in store in his acknowledgement "With a tip
of the hat to the Mick." Well, that's the only understatement
in the book. Most of it reads like a Spillane parody. The
main character, cop Walter Patterson, could be Mike Hammer's
long lost cousin. He certainly sneers, snaps and snarls with
about the same frequency. His attitude to women ("After her
I'd felt the only way to keep a skirt in line was to hold a
whip hand") is straight out of ONE LONELY NIGHT, and his
penchant for the melodramatic is never far away ("Don't ever
come back to Central City. Not unless it's to die!").
Maybe the book could have been salvaged with some snappy
dialogue:
"The big one grunted. "Cop", he said tonelessly. "I thought I
smelled me a cop."
I looked at him a second. The kind of
trouble he was having with his smeller could be fixed easily.
I turned back to shorty. "Vince ain't seein' nobody," he
said.
"Short man, you go tell him he can
make it here or down at the precinct."" or some new and
interesting imagery:
"She was pacing the floor like some caged animal".
Still, I found something strangely gripping about all of
this. Partly, I was looking for more bad writing (it
culminates in the magnificent: "I hate him so! We'll
celebrate the night he fries."), but I have to confess that
from two-thirds through the book I was hooked. The plot
involves our hero, Walter, meeting Tina, the wife of the
local head of the mob. Walter sleeps with Tina once and falls
in love with her. In fact, so besotted is Walt after his
night of passion that he decides to help her kill her
husband. None of this set-up is remotely convincing. But if
you shake your head and read on, you find the rest of the
book is very well plotted. Tension increases as the stakes
continue to rise for Walt and Tina. They carry out their plan
to kill her husband, and of course it doesn't work out as
they expected.
I don't know much about Garrity. I believe his real name is
Dave Gerrity and I know he wrote at least one other book:
KISS OFF THE DEAD. Judging from the title, it has to be more
of the same.
Al
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