Hard Man

Pearce, an ex-con and Edinburgh hard man who’s still recovering from the recent loss of his mother, is invited by the dysfunctional Baxter family to protect their pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter from her martial-arts-expert husband, Wallace, a man ten years her senior with a penchant for killing family pets. Having found out that the baby’s not his, Wallace has sworn vengeance. Pearce declines the job: He’s no babysitter. But when Wallace kills Pearce’s dog, he goes too far. Now it’s personal.


Revenge is part of the grieving process. But has Pearce finally met his match?


Time to find out who the real hard man is.


Over the course of 8 blood soaked chapters that all take their names from movies, Hard Man unfolds with a savage intensity. The movie titles used will cleverly act as epigraphs for the chapters.


Hard Man is divided pretty clearly into two parts. It’s during the first part that we will be introduced to the Baxter clan and their situation with Wallace. Their opening gambit to scare Wallace fails miserably and they decide to attempt to enlist the help of Pearce. Pearce, a character from Guthrie’s debut novel Two-Way Split, is as the title suggests a hard man. But he is also a man who is, by his very nature, more reactive then proactive so he refuses the job. The full dysfunctionality of the Baxter's will slowly become evident as we witness their machinations to not only get rid of Wallace but to make further attempts to enlist the aid of Pearce.


It will be one of these further attempts that sets into motion the final full throated berserker yell that is the second part.


But before we get to the second part I think that it’s important to note Hard Man's humor. Dark, gallows humor to be sure but humor none the less. Guthrie is a savvy enough writer to pepper his tale with a healthy dosage of humor so that it offsets the violence. It acts as a counter measure that prevents the book from becoming oppressive. It also heightens the tension of the more serious moments. The result is a potent and heady blend of comedy and violence that will have you laughing out loud at times, even if you feel guilty for doing so.


An early scene from the book provides a good example of the humor in Hard Man.

Now for that second part. At some point the narrative goes right over the edge and it’s this final free-for-all, oh-shit-the-brakes-have-been-cut-and-we're-all-going-to-die section that will go down in history as the classic that it is. It really does have to be read to be believed as it becomes a kind of noir passion play.


I don't think that I've read a sustained conclusion to a book as breathtaking as this one in a long time.


The second half also plants Hard Man firmly in the tradition of Grand Guignol. When the whole of the book is considered it becomes clear that Hard Man and the plays of the Grand Guignol have a number of shared traits.


The Grand Guignol theatre specialized in plays that had a grim outlook of the world, an outlook not entirely dissimilar to the one found in Hard Man. They became world renown for their horror plays which utilized realistic special effects and a close proximity of the audience to produce an effect that horrified and compelled the audience to watch. But horror plays weren't the only type shown; in fact an evening at the theatre would find alternating shows of horror and comedy much like the alternating scenes of comedy and violence in Hard Man. The calling card for the style was the climaxes of the horror plays. They were notorious for being over the top in their bloody, outlandishly gruesome and violent depictions; Hard Man's climax is at times all of these. Lastly plays at the Grand Guignol often dealt with an altered state of consciousness that resulted in a loss of control, extreme panic, hallucinations and even insanity. One character in Hard Man is going to experience all of these and be put through the wringer more then any of the others.


In short I feel comfortable calling Hard Man an outstanding piece of crime fiction and a modern Grand Guignol masterpiece.


A quick mention should also be made that there is no attempt made to Americanize the text of Hard Man. The locale and the language are left intact from the UK edition. It's to the publisher’s credit that this was left unchanged.


--Brian Lindenmuth