XXX Shamus

The lone wolf private eye that makes every woman melt is a dream and an archetype that a lot of men can't help but wish they lived up to. Strong enough to take any heavy's punch, smart enough to outwit the fatcats that keep us down and possessing the kind of charm that makes women awful compliant after only five or ten minutes of usually somewhat demeaning conversation. Hopper Garland is living this dream. He finds young, beautiful women who've gone missing and has a gorgeous pervert of a secretary to help him out with it.Sure he gets roughed up some now and then, but it's all in a day's work, right? Hopper Garland has a hypercharged male fantasy life. What the animus wants, he gets. The private eye story, when it's good and it's steamy and it's gritty and hearkens back to Frank Miller's "bad old days, the all or nothin' days" does a great job of this. And it seems on the surface that that's what this book's about and that's what it's for. But sometimes when you get down to the grimy, slimy, sweaty core of things you find they ain't what they seem. Why else would we need detectives?Hopper's name is, I imagine an homage to the Frank Booth of Lynch's Blue Velvet, the embodiment of neonoir perversity and to Judy Garland, indicating this man is going to end up most assuredly not in Kansas anymore, even if home is already a suburb of Dante's third circle. From the getgo you can see he is a man wracked by compulsions and full of a shame he can't confront. The unstoppable pheromones of our macho Marlowe manque were forged in abuse and incest. His need to get and save the girl a product of longing for something he fears that he can never have.Hopper is "paid" to track down a pregnant teen who has vanished into an underground of pornography, betrayed by adults around her and the values of a sexsick town. Hopper is protecting an innocent corrupted or maybe trying to find that innocence can still be. He descends into this underworld and deeper into the sickness of his animus and finds there might be something and someone in his life worth saving, even though she risks contamination by the filth around him. It's a traditional PI novel value taken to fabulous extremes.This book is loaded with sex, violence and characters well beyond redemption. But it is loaded with beauty, the strangely poetic howling of an animal in chains. The dream of American manhood turned nightmare is seldom shown so well, hearkening back to the head of Alfredo Garcia collecting flies in the back seat of Warren Oates' car. Red Hammond shows you EVERYTHING that happened in that back seat.

Good Sunday reading huh? I blew through this novel in one sitting as I had to find out what came of the tortured protagonist. The story starts out simple enough as a PI named Hopper is hired by a young woman to find her underage sister who was knocked up. Hopper has a history with successfully finding young women in cases like this that haven't turned out so well for him or the girl he found. He also has this cursed ability to make pretty much any woman he comes across want to f his brains out. Not to mention he is having an incestuous relationship with his sister. Then things start to get kind of perverted.The story is very transgressive as it violates many taboos but in the hands of a writer as skilled as "Hammond" these violations enhance the story. There are a lot of struggles going on in this book. External struggles between the PI and the world around him which leads to a lot of action packed scenes and internal struggles within the character where you can truly feel the Hopper's oppressive emotional suffering. Beneath all the perversion there is a love story. Hammond will make you question your own morals when you want this crazy weirdo to catch a break for once. I just wanted to reach inside the pages and smack the dude upside his head on several occasions because he made several obvious mistakes leading to the worsening of his situation. If I could think of anything to compare XXX Shamus to it maybe Matthew Scudder mixed with some Matthew Stokoe? I don't know if that's exactly right but I do think if you are a fan of the Matthew Scudder novels or and Matthew Stokoe then you will probably like this book as much as I did.I guess it's an open secret that established noir writer Anthony Neil Smith wrote this book and it was published originally by Broken River Books which is where I got my copy. I have since heard that Amazon's phony "family friendly" policy the book was deemed too pornographic and they now refuse to sell it, requiring it to come out via a different route. Luckily it is still available. I remember seeing something on social media mentioning a possible follow up Hopper book if sells for this one go well. I would like to see that happen so support this book and support Broken River books.

I came to this book late because I’d heard so much about its extremes of sex and violence that I didn’t want to be disappointed. I enjoy extremes. It’s why I read gritty fiction. Each book is a gamble. Books you’ve heard a lot about can tend to spoil things, but this book paid off! Not only do I wish I would’ve gotten to it sooner, I look forward to reading it again in the future.

XXX SHAMUS is the smartest piece of trash I've ever read. It's also the sleaziest work of art. I'll be scrubbing this filthy feeling off of me for months, but it's worth it, and at some point I'll dive back in to these seedy (oh yeah, THAT kind of seed) pages. Hopper is one of my favorite characters to come out of noir fiction in a long time. He's likable, timid, introverted, and yet he's a sex machine, an addict and a magnet. Though the raunchy hardcore sex is probably what most will remember this book by (and can't blame them, it's unforgettable, whether that's a good or bad thing), the story is twisty in a subtle, slow burning way. The narrative is gripping, Hammond's voice alluring. And the characters are all layered and interesting, no matter how big or small a role they play. This is a disgusting masterpiece.

don't read if you are easily offended,one of the most extreme novels I've read.will look out for this author in the future.