Safe Return Doubtful

American Literature – First Published 1988

At one stage Eugene Talmadge ‘Knockout’ Biggs’s promoter boasts that the young boxer from rural Georgia has had 72 successive knockouts. It may be a correct statement but those knockouts are actually of himself.

After a dodgy start in the sport his best friend Pete, an ex-boxer himself, discovers that Biggs has the ability to knock himself out, and using that unique ability he plys his trade amongst the higher echelons of New Orleans society.

Like most of Crews’s fiction this is fast, unforgiving and violent as it meanders through boxing lore, snuff films and kinky sex. Though Biggs seems on the road to the top, a young man from the country, learning his way around, trying to make a fortune. But things go wrong of course, appearances are deceiving and despite his courage and ingenuity intrigue and danger await.

It’s more satirical than Crews usually is, spiky, and yet less humorous. It lacks those typical character descriptions that are a highlight; it has the usual cast of misfits but we don’t get into their psyches as in his best work.

It’s strength is in its originality, and in telling a moralistic tale of Biggs’s career, a would-be contender, becomes disheartened, sees himself as being without worth, and becomes a plaything for others.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5