GARRITY – Kiss Off the Dead. Gold Medal #948, pb original, 1960.

   To get the unappealing taste of Brad Latham’s Hook book out of my head, I went to my collection of prime Gold Medal stock and more or less picked this one out at random.

GARRITY David J.

   I’ve read enough of these early paperback novels to be convinced that the booze-babes-and-bullets approach to detective/mystery fiction does not automatically have to mean that it’s a book that I found as disappointing as I did The Gilded Canary.

   To tell you the truth, I was a little worried. Could it be that I was wrong, that my memory had gone bad? After reading this, though, my doubts were gone. I was completely reassured. They just don’t write ’em the way they used to, that’s all there is to it.

   This is the story of Max Carey, an ex-cop who’s gone bad, on the trail of a woman — his wife, as it happens — who’s to blame. She’s a tramp, although he refuses to admit it, even to himself. Just as he finds her — in a smoke-filled bar on the way to Florida — she disappears again, and the very next day (naturally!) her body turns up in the ocean.

   Small-town police officers being what they are, Carey is blamed, and he spends the rest of the book one step ahead of the law — and the mob– desperately trying to find the killer before either one of them finds him. A hat-check girl named Sherry is the only person who’s on his side.

   Not a terrifically original plot, I have to admit, but Garrity’s roughly-hewed writing style saves the day, even to the point of being nearly poetically effective in papering over the cliches. The non-stop action includes the prerequisite bedroom scene, but here at least the camera pulls away before the X-rated warning lights go flashing on.

   The book is filled with as much action as the Warner book, if not more, but what Garrity does that Latham doesn’t is to make you feel it — as nearly a participant as reading a book can do, not as a voyeur.

– From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 6, No. 2, March/April 1982
        (considerably revised)


[UPDATE] 03-10-10. The revisions I just mentioned were designed to make the review stand more on its own, though I think it’s fairly clear that you might want to read the preceding review anyway, just to make the context clearer. I’ve made no changes in what you read now from what my opinion was then.

Bibliographic Data:  [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

   GARRITY.   Pseudonym of David J. Gerrity, 1923-1984.

        Kiss Off the Dead (n.) Gold Medal 1960
        Cry Me a Killer (n.) Gold Medal 1961

GARRITY David J.

        Dragon Hunt (n.) Signet 1967, as by Dave J. Garrity.   (PI Peter Braid)
        The Hot Mods (n.) Signet 1969, as by Dave J. Garrity.

   GERRITY, DAVID J(ames).   Series character: Mafia hit man Frank Cardolini in all.

        The Never Contract (n.) Signet 1975

GARRITY David J.

        The Plastic Man (n.) Signet 1976
        The Numbers Man (n.) Signet 1977

NOTE: Some of Garrity/Gerrity’s books were either dedicated to Mickey Spillane or had a blurb by the latter on the cover (“I wish I had written it!”). They were friends, I believe, or Spillane acted in some way as a sponsor or mentor, but I haven’t tracked down any more specific information than this.