Nightfall / Cassidy's Girl / Night Squad - by David Goodis (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

NIGHTFALL

Jim Vanning stands at the window of his Greenwich Village apartment. It's a hot, sticky night, but he's afraid to go out. Vanning is haunted by memories of a car accident...and a gun. He's killed a man, and he knows they will be coming for him. But will it be the cops or the criminals that find him first? Finally, Vanning decides to go out. He has no idea where he's going, but he's in a hurry to get there. That's when he meets Martha...and soon realizes that she will either redeem him, or lead him to his doom. Either way, Vanning is rushing into the night...

CASSIDY'S GIRL

Cassidy used to be an airline pilot. But that was before the crash. Now he drives a bus. And drinks with his friends. And fights with his wife Mildred, a slave to her temper, her body, her sex. But Mildred has found a new man to torment. So when Cassidy meets Doris, he decides to ditch his life, and take up with her instead. Doris is his angel, his way out. But Doris already has a lover--the bottle. Torn between his jealousy over Mildred and his new-found desire for Doris, Cassidy starts making plans to escape the desolation that is his life. But a man can only go so far to escape himself.

NIGHT SQUAD

Corey Bradford was a cop but they caught him on the take, and bounced him. Now he's a back alley pariah. He can't even sit in at one of Grogan's poker games. But when Corey saves the big man's life one night, Grogan offers him $15,000 to find out who tried to heist him. Then McDermott of the Night Squad steps in and offers Corey his badge back to work with him to bring down Grogan. Corey is torn down the middle. The Night Squad can hand him back his prestige, his dignity. But Grogan's bribe can bring him a small fortune, a way out. Make one mistake, and either side will kill him.

Review Quotes

"David Goodis is the mystery man of hardboiled fiction ... He wrote of winos and barroom piano players and small-time thieves in a vein of tortured lyricism all his own ... he was a poet of the losers."--Geoffrey O'Brien

"Nightfall is the kind of low key crime novel that modern authors, obsessed with martial arts and car chases, seem unable to replicate. The novel's thrills come from tension rather than action. Its focus is on psychology rather than gunplay. The story's violent moments are explosive but contained, usually related in a paragraph or two."--Tzer Island

"[Goodis] can take the very lowest players on society's scale and make you care about them. Even when you know they have absolutely no shot, which is usually the case, you still care. Cassidy's Girl reads like Goodis' love letter to these people, and for that matter to all the losers who ever appeared in his novels."--Mike Dennis