Safe Return Doubtful

Night Squad was written towards the end of Goodis’s career, in 1961, his final work published in his lifetime.

It’s a novel of corruption, dirty cops, double-crossing dames, and a cast of villains who will stop at nothing to get what they want. 34 year old Corey Bradford has been thrown off the Philadephia Police force for taking bribes, and is steadily sliding into a life of alcoholism in the seedy suburb of The Swamp. The local crime boss hires him to find out who is infiltrating his racket, while Philadelphia PD offer him his badge back if he joins the notorious Night Squad, a group of disgraced cops like him who do a lot of the city’s dirty work. Of course, Bradford takes both jobs, playing one off against the other.

This is different to the earlier work of Goodis; here, his protagonist lacks any sort of good intention, his corruption is from within, he’s a nasty piece of work. And so are many of the other main characters in the book. It’s as if Goodis himself has lost faith in villains having any sort of saving grace. That was much more noticeable in his earlier work.

It’s got a decent if rather straight-forward plot, which gives the author license to spend his time delving into Bradford’s character. The reader holds out for some sort of salvation but none arrives, a sign perhaps, of Goodis’s mood towards his last years.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5