The Kind One
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
In the kill-or-be-killed criminal underworld of 1930s Los Angeles, "Two Gun Danny" Landon has a distinct disadvantage. According to the fellas, he used to pull all kinds of shoot-ups and shenanigans...but damned if he can't remember a thing from before last year, when he got hit over the head with a lead pipe. Sadistic mobster Bud Seitz -- known to friends and enemies alike as "The Kind One" -- seems to have big plans for him, but truthfully, Danny can't stomach the dirty work. His aim is off, the other wiseguys laugh at him, and he'd gladly trade in the drunken parties and the endless broads for a day at the movies with his colorful and mysterious neighbor Dulwich and eleven-year-old Sophie, whose deadbeat mother delivers an endless stream of emotional and physical abuse. But when Bud's beautiful girlfriend Darla begs Danny to help her escape the Kind One's dark, brutal world, Danny must confront a dangerous test of loyalty that could irrevocably change his future -- and his past -- forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Screenwriter Epperson (coauthor of the script for One False Move) makes an effortless transition to novel writing with this hard-biting noir set in 1930s Los Angeles. While the contours of the plot will strike many as familiar, the author avoids clich s in his tale of Danny Landon, who works for vicious mobster Bub Seitz (aka "the Kind One"). Danny, who suffers from amnesia, only dimly recalls the events that led to his receiving the epithet "Two Gun Danny," but finds the accounts he's been given of his violent past at odds with his current revulsion for bloodshed. When Seitz, a mercurial figure with a hair-trigger temper, asks Landon to keep an eye on his current squeeze, Darla, the two men soon find themselves in conflict. With spare prose, Epperson presents Landon's inner turmoil plausibly and manages to throw in an occasional turn of phrase that Raymond Chandler might have penned. While this book lacks the depth of James Ellroy's L.A. noir novels, it's an impressive debut and deserves to be followed by more.
