The Bibliothecary

The Evil That Men Do

by Dave White

Three Rivers Press, 287 pp

Savage Night

by Allan Guthrie

Harcourt, 311 pp

Reviewed by Edward Pettit

Bloody Katanas and Battered Private Eyes

Dave White is a New Jersey writer of PI novels set in Jersey and Allan Guthrie is a Scottish writer of violent crime novels set in Scotland. You’d think they’d have little in common (except their boyish good looks). However, their two new books, White’s The Evil That Men Do and Guthrie’s Savage Night, both subscribe to a noir view of family and violence that is unforgiving and unrelenting. And very readable.

White’s novel is the second in his Jackson Donne private eye series, set in New Brunswick and the surrounding Jersey area. The first novel, When One Man Dies, introduced Donne as a burnt out former cop, trying to get his life back together, but haunted by his past connections to both the crooks and police. He’s the quintessential noir hero who can never catch a break. Tragedy follows mishap follows bad luck follows a fight for his own survival. We’ve been down this road before, but White balances nicely our expectations of the genre and his own contemporary take on the proceedings.

White’s PI is an isolated outsider, helping those also on the fringes of society. His jobs usually start out for a paycheck, but end up finished out of sheer compulsion. As resistance meets him at every turn, Donne just goes on. Like the noir hero he is, Donne battles the fates aligned against him because to stop would be to admit defeat. Unlike his namesake, he IS an island and still every death affects him.

So far so noir. Nothing new here. But while in classic noir and hard-boiled stories, the private detective reaches out into society and finds corruption that ultimately eats away at his own self, White’s PI delves into his own family, retreating from a society that has already rejected him. And what he finds isn’t solace or peace. What he finds is explosive hate and violent love, in those around him and in himself.

The Evil That Men Do also differs from the classic Raymond Chandler world in another respect: action. Like may contemporary crime writers, film has had as much influence on their work as other novels have (often more so). Sometimes Jackson Donne reminded me more of John McClain, the hero cop of the “Die Hard” movies, than he did of any traditional PI in a fedora. And that’s a good thing. The action in this novel crackles. Donne gets beaten up so often that you’d think he’d break, but he still manages to claw his way to his feet and throw one more punch. However, White handles his plot so well that it doesn’t seem hackneyed or clichéd. Not only is Donne compelled to go on, so is the reader.

Guthrie’s Savage Night could never be called hackneyed. But there is plenty of hacking involved. The book opens with Fraser Savage and his girlfriend returning from a night of drinking to find a headless corpse in Fraser’s apartment. What follows is a tale of two families who will stop at nothing as they pursue their respective vengeances. This is the Hatfields and the McCoys with katanas. For Guthrie the blood of family is not just a metaphor. These families, the Savages and the Parks, share blood because it gets splattered all over themselves.

The novel takes place over only six hours in Edinburgh, but Guthrie flashes back and forth in time, revealing only just enough to compel the reader forward in suspense. I think this is the best thing that Guthrie has written to date. Savage Night works on all cylinders. I know these characters better than I’ve known any of the ones in his previous novels, Kiss Her Goodbye, Two-Way Split and Hard Man. In the last one, Hard Man, although I enjoyed it, I thought that the violence had begun to take over the plot, leaving me with characters just doing things, not characters living. But the Parks and the Savages seem like real brothers and sisters and fathers and wives and husbands. Not that I’d want to meet any of them in person. But I love reading about their lives.

Like White, Guthrie explores a noir sensibility of Family. The ever tightening bonds of union, whether genetic or by marriage, that normally threaten to crush, must here remain close so the family can stop from being crushed by others. The family that kills together stays together. Or at least stays in as many pieces as possible. The twisted dysfunction of these families works to help them stay together. Guthrie always writes with a deft ironic touch. But this one is his best.