Cassidy’s Girl

Hailed as one of Goodis’s best works, this is a gripping crime novel about a disgraced airline pilot who has sunk to the lower depths of existence. Disaster trails the forlorn Cassidy like a hellhound. His self-destructive pattern results not only in self-torment but drags two women, Mildred and Doris, down into the gutter with him. Set in the hard streets of Philadelphia, Goodis’s home ground, Cassidy’s Girl entails blackmail, murder and the usual rough stuff, endowing his icy streets and wretched shanties with expressionistic intensity.

“Goodis’s characters are...bad-dream Bogarts on the far ledge of existence...A strange world where...there are only two kinds of people...the wounded and the slain.”—Mike Wallington

“David Goodis is the mystery man of hardboiled fiction.”—Geoffrey O’Brien

“Action and thrills!”—San Francisco Call-Bulletin