Not really Crime, perhaps I should add a Noir category. Anyhow, entertaining read, though a bit dated / far-fetched (those detriments never really bother me too much though). Couple vacays in Jamaica. She's a cold fish because of a childhood trauma / attack from family gardener and so cannot bear her husband's desires. So, of course he collapses into himself, begins drinking to excess, establishes a nice NYC paid paramour, until wife finds out, so it all collapses and they have to flee to Jamaica. He continues his comically over the top self destructive binge... ultimately looking for trouble in the worst part of Kingston where he accidentally kills a man who was trying to mug him. Blackmail ensues - though our anti-hero couldn't care less. Still, the poor cold wife has become enamored of a string, virile poster boy at the hotel, causing her to wonder about her weird attraction to aggressive men (all a bit too obvious and over the top for me). Finally and happily she realizes she must go to her man and save his bacon in the dark, mean alleys of Kingston and it kind of works out and perhaps they will get over their cold marriage lot. Loved the self destructive tear of the husband and the repressed erotic tension of the wife. More, please. ( )

This was just exceptional. An utterly gripping tale of despair and determination. Beautifully written and yet so grimy and dark it makes you itch. ( )

James and Cora Bevan's nine year marriage is spiraling round the drain. In what they both know is a parting gesture, James takes a month off work and they fly to a resort in Kingston, Jamaica. While James gets embarrassingly drunk every day, he ruminates on why his marriage fell apart, the drinking, and his affair with his prostitute girlfriend that Cora finally caught onto. Cora thinks about her frigidness that drove her husband away and she finds a fellow guest who falls for her.
James' drinking leads him to the bad part of town where he is the intended victim of a mugging, and it throws him into a web of problems with the city's criminals.
I liked the story as it focused on the crumbling marriage and James' reliance on huge, huge amounts of alcohol, as it was almost noir. But the focus shifts midway into the Blevans being blackmailed too easily over a crime James didn't commit. Gritty but not overly realistic. ( )

There was a reason that this book wasn't reprinted for over fifty years. While Goodis is a writer of superior skills, this title does not approach the quality of other Goodis works such as Shoot the Piano Player, Dark Passage, or Cassidy's Girl. ( )

David Goodis was the noir poet of Philadelphia. His books are known for being dark, dreary, tales of a man all alone, perhaps accused or suspected of a crime, with what seems like half a city against him, as he falls further and further into the muck and mire to escape the hoods that are after him. His books are nearly always top-notch. "The Wounded and The Slain," although it deals with depression, angst, unhappiness, bitterness, and the like, somehow feels a bit brighter than most of Goodis' work. Perhaps that is because of the setting, which, for most of the book, takes place in Jamaica at a beach resort. Perhaps his writing is a bit livelier here. This work is easily approachable and easily read in one or two sittings.
James and Cora Bevin are an unhappily married couple who live in New York City. She is frigid. He is unhappy and has turned first to prostitutes and then to the bottle and then to pyschoanalysis. They are both bitterly unhappy with each other and with their lives and yet have never managed to quit each other. Goodis does an excellent job of capturing their history and background in a short chapter. They are in Jamaica for a change of scenery, a chance to recapture their early romance, the spark which has long since disappeared.

Goodis really captures James' angst, his wallowing in self-pity, his drowning himself in bottle after bottle of rum, while Cora never wants to leave the room and is embarressed time and again by James' drunken performances at the hotel. She finds herself attracted to a stranger who aims to take her away from James and James senses it and seems ready to let her go. He heads into the Kingston slums to find another bar, to drown himself, to lose himself. He is admittedly suicidal at times and perhaps he's thinking he will get mugged and it will be all over.

But James and Cora are not the horrible people the publisher's blurb would lead you to believe. They are both basically decent but troubled people. The book contains streams of consciousness from both and their inner conversations will lead the reader to wonder which, if either, is sane and which will have a complete nervous breakdown.

James does something in the slums. He at first tries to walk away from it, but his conscience forces him to come to terms with it and there is a point at which this flawed being finds redemption. Throughout it all, though, you never know when James will just give up and drown in the muck and the mire. ( )