9. Night Cry by William L. Stuart

I love the colours on this cover.

I had been looking for this forever after having read the review in Vintaged Hardboiled Reads (been too long, August West) and found it at Kayo Books in San Francisco.  Unfortunately, the paperback was too beautiful and old to read in any normal situation so it had to wait until the vacation when I knew I would be reading in long stints and could keep it in a safe place.

Whoah, this was a tough book!  If you like noir and can get your hands on this, just read it.  I will be giving some initial spoilers away here.  The book begins with a couple leaving a bar and the guy getting into a scuffle with the bouncer.  Later the bouncer is found dead and it seems pretty clear that the guy did it.  Tough guy cop Mark Devlin, who is the protagonist, goes to the boyfriends house.  Assuming he did it, he punches him in the gut and then the head, I guess that was just standard procedure in those days.  Except here he kills him.  Let me tell you this scene was like a punch in the gut.  It really took me a few moments to absorb what had just happened.  It's really brutal and just so frank.  Devlin's mistake, though, is not that he killed the guy, but subsequently trying to hide it.  Things get complicated and dark.  Great book.