Synopses & Reviews
Will Christopher Baer's hypnotic debut novel merges the best of the noir tradition with a scalpel-sharp modern sensibility. When ex-cop Phineas Poe is released from a six-month stay in a Denver psychiatric hospital, he meets a savage and unsentimental woman named Jude. After a drunken night with her, Phineas awakens in a bathtub packed with ice, holding a soggy note that reads "if you want to live, call 911." Jude has taken one of his kidneys. This phantasmagoric tale follows Poe as he pursues, and falls for, the mysterious Jude and is plunged into an edgy, drug-blurred underworld inhabited by a gleeful cast of sinister characters. Fast, furious, and glittering with a razor-sharp wit, this is a startling novel of modern noir.
Synopsis
"Don't worry," a voice whispers. "You really only need one."
Phineas Poe, disgraced cop turned psychiatric case, turned murder suspect, turned reluctant kidney donor, gives $200 to a beautiful woman in a red dress, a scar at the edge of her mouth and a body like a knife. He then wakes up in a bath of melting ice, blood on his fingers and staples in his sides. Now she haunts his dreams and his days. She's got his kidney on ice and her teeth in his heart.
Finding her means throwing himself into a drug-blurred underworld. Falling in love with her means fighting to avoid becoming her accomplice as well as her victim.
Fast, corrosive wit, glittering, razor-sharp images, a cast of comic and sinister characters, part love story, part mystery, part hallucination, Kiss Me, Judas is a startling novel of modern noir.
"A surreal nightmare full of the hard-boiled nourish spirit of Raymond Chandler." - San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Will Christopher Baer was born in 1966 in Mississippi and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He has won fiction prizes from Story Magazine and has published work in Bomb and Nerve. He lives in California.