Kiss the Blood Off My Hands

by Gerald Butler

On the run after accidentally killing a bouncer, Bill Saunders is taken in by a young woman who gives him a reason for living

Genres: Noir, Crime, Fiction

237 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Gerald Butler (1907-1988), a British author who has almost completely faded from view, published Kiss the Blood off My Hands in 1940.

Reviews

[Bill Kelly]

Straight-forward well-told tale of two people who draw strength from each other to counter the dismal prospects life has dealt them. Bill is an emotionally stunted career criminal who ruthlessly slashes his way through life, although each criminal deed requires him to key up rationalizations that enable him to live with himself. Jane is treading water in a dead-end job and although highly principled and intolerant of those who hurt others, she is drawn to Bill; she knows not why, but not knowing does not get in her way. They engage in a romance more closely resembling adolescent experimentation than mature relationship building. They become as lost in each other as they were lost alone, so the events comprising the story that plunge them into far more trouble than they were experiencing on their own take on a somewhat surreal aspect. Both are highly fearful of each other and the bond that is developing between them, but despite the misgivings of each, they overcome their life-long emotional restraints and do what they need to do to overcome the messes they have created for themselves.
Butler has crafted a tale where the crimes committed by Bill and Jane are merely a backdrop for the developing relationship between two people. The events portrayed in the story are sparingly recounted; the emotional impact on the characters is what Butler is principally interested in. How the relationship between Bill and Jane develops (and how they evolve individually) is what must be believable for readers; the plot events on their own, taken separately (or together) often seem fantastic to the point of absurdity. Butler’s two protagonists are purely visceral, there is very little attempt by either to analyze or “think through” their developing personal situation. So visceral that for over half the book, Bill is unaware of Jane’s name, calling her only “kid”. And she doesn’t enlighten him; he learns of her name by accident. For Bill and Jane, there are more important things at work here than labels. A refreshing change from the identity obsessed, narcissistic, poop-fondling protagonists we so often meet in today’s crime fiction. Bill and Jane are more interested in each other than they are in themselves and their redemption lies in their selflessness rather than in a quest for self-gain or even self-preservation.
I found both the first chapter and the last to be quite remarkable. The opening involves a fantastic premise that reminded me of the Richard III-Queen Anne seduction scene, but Butler pulls it off by focusing on character development, rather than the situation itself. The last chapter is highly lyrical and in vivid contrast to the spare, gritty prose found in the preceding chapters, but once again Butler makes it work because the writing is appropriate to the emotional context of the situation - Bill and Jane have achieved personal resolutions, which although precipitated by the events of the story, are far more important than their crimes or any resulting consequences.
A crime novel by circumstance and a romance without the self-conscious hype or social trimmings.

[Andy Weston]

This great fun, a classic noir with a dodgy protagonist - using the pseudonym of Bill Saunders, the narrator, an American, or maybe Canadian, is in Britain for some unknown reason, passing himself off as American, though he may be Canadian, beats a man to death in a busy pub.
He is a wonderful creation, a proper baddy - a brutal criminal, to whom people are objects to be exploited, and if they’re in his way, then they’d better move aside or take the consequences.
Its easy to see this book as having a key role in the development of noir, leading on to the likes of Don Carpenter, Elmore Leonard and David Goodis.
Somehow, Saunders develops a love interest, and the real interest in the novel is whether romance can prove redemptive to a man whose pathway seems so entrenched in wrongdoing.

Here's a clip from when Saunders's hardman persona gets tested for the first time..

Quite soon. No putting it off. You can’t choose the day. You can’t wait and pick the day when you feel like it. This is their show. They do the choosing. They do everything. You’re just the thing they do it with.

But it’s only the damned powerless feeling, that’s all. They usually scream, do they? Just mugs. They’ve screamed when I’ve hit them, but they’ve never really hurt me. They’ve picked the wrong one this time. They can knock me silly but they can’t hurt me. Not the way they mean.

The footsteps clatter along the passage. Now for it. Here goes. Brace yourself. Stop those silly doubts from flashing across your mind. The stories about it are all the same. It isn’t any picnic. So brace yourself. face up, that’s the thing.

[Nancy Oakes]

read earlier this month
I am so behind with posting, but I sort of jumped the stack to bring this book forward. You can read the full post here:
http://www.crimesegments.com/2024/06/...

Just released this month, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands is the latest in the Noir Film Classics series from Stark House Press. I have a few of these books but this is the first I've actually read. And since I love to see books I've read sort of come alive on the screen, I bought a copy of the 1948 film based on this novel starring Burt Lancaster and Joan Fontaine and watched it as soon as I'd finished reading. The book took me completely by surprise -- I have to say that I'd not heard of this author before so to have something this good in my hands the first time out with this writer was a definite treat.

The action begins in a pub when Bill Saunders, fresh off the boat in England, kills a bouncer. He hadn't meant to, but the punch he'd landed on the man's face knocked him to the floor, stone cold dead. He doesn't care that the guy is dead; all he cares about is getting out of there. Before anyone could call the police, Bill takes off running and so do a few others, chasing right behind him. He notices a woman "going into a door," and takes advantage of the situation, forcing his way in. Deciding to stay overnight, the next morning Bill discovers that the woman (Jane) has guts and doesn't seem afraid of him. He realizes that she's different than the other women in his experience, and that "There was something about her." Eventually he leaves after she returns home from her job, but it won't be the last they see of each other. Bill is a hardcore, certified tough guy, beating up and stealing money from taxi customers, robbing a sex worker, referring to women as bitches and tarts, and violence, which exists just beneath his surface, is his way of dealing with most situations. For him, people are just mugs, and as such, they're prey, ready to be taken advantage of. But when he reconnects with Jane, she sees something "decent" within him and works to give him a purpose. The question is one of whether or not she change this man by taming what Curtis Evans refers to in his introduction as "his brutal impulses with the proverbial good woman's love." Is Bill at all redeemable and can he truly be rehabilitated? There's obviously more to the story, but I'm not going there right now.

The short length of this book (166 pages) has nothing whatsoever to do with its complexity, and when an author can pack so much into such a short space, in my opinion, he's done a fine job. Here that complexity is found not only in the character of Bill, or in the question of redemption, but more to the point, in the way that Butler maps out exactly how one random event sets everything else into motion, with unintended, and most certainly unexpected consequences rippling down the line, definitely a true noir trait.

It's so good that I couldn't put it down once I'd picked it up. Solidly good reading and an absolute must for anyone who likes tough, gritty twisty noir. A giant thank you to Stark House for my copy!

oh, and watch the film if you can -- despite a number of changes, it's good too.

[Carl Waluconis]

This satisfied my hunger for seeing a film noir. The author is British and the novel not quite as dark as the Spillane-like title implies. However, it is a first-person narrative, and the narrator is a thug. The copy I read is an old Dell "mapback", which if you are an old paperback fan means a lot. There is always a map on the back dealing with the crime. Often it is a murder, and often the map is an important part of solving the mystery. There is no mystery here, but there is a murder. The violence, crime. brutality, and "trapped-in-a-narrow-place" aspects of noire are all here. Usually Dell paperbacks were not quite so dark (Lion Books is the place to read for books that deliver grim noire.). The front page selling blurb is an extraordinary 4 pages long, but do not read it because there is a spoiler there. I guess in the 1940's people did not care about such things? On the other hand, it does include the extraordinary circumstances of the book's publication in America. The original British publication was passed around on a boat, but had a missing ending. The boat was sunk during WWII, but one of the readers made it a mission to find the complete book. It had an interesting twist with the central woman character sliding between rescuer and inadvertent femme fatale. The slang as well as other elements show the British connection, but it still fulfilled my noir hunger, at least for now. There is a movie with Burt Lancaster, but I have not ashy had the opportunity to see it.

[False]

I was originally seeking the film noir movie "Kiss the Blood Off My Hands" with Joan Fontaine and Burt Lancaster (through my State library system,) and I couldn't acquire a copy (it is out on dvd--I don't want to buy it,) but I did see a first edition of the book so chose to read that. Sadly, the most interesting things about the book, for me, were it's physicality--that it was published one year after WWII, the browning, fragile pages, using post-war and still cheap paper. I worried the entire time I was reading the book, not wanting to snap off corners of the paper. It looked well-handled and the last checkout date that I could determine was in 1996, so a good fifty years of people seeking this book out. I was surprised it was set in London and outer regions in England. It never really had a dame. Yes there was a female, but she was passive compared to the usual film noir types. The protagonist was constantly trying to put out fires laid within the plot. I won't ruin the ending since it has a bit of a twist, but it seemed a weak resolve. I will say there were no big bang shootouts at the end. Seek it out if you are interested in noir. There is also a book by the same title that writes exclusively about film noir; i.e. it is not a novel.

[Raime]

Competent noir, some plot decisions were weird, many were logical and exciting, but reading experience was not great for me because of the violent contents

[daniel]

One of the best first chapters of a novel I've read. Afterwards it meanders and the tension doesn't reach the previous levels, but the hardboiled style and entertaining dialogue makes it worthwhile.

[Matt Phillips]

A little less than four for me...Competent noir. Not quite the hit I get from Goodis or Thompson, but an important book.

[Bernard]

3.7, rounded up.
Good, vintage British crime novel, the author's first and it seems that it was very popular in its day. It was filmed in 1948. The author also wrote another novel, "Mad With Much Heart", which became the classic movie, ON DANGEROUS GROUND. If only that book was in print, too.

This book is about a thug named Bill Saunders, who is on the run after punching a bouncer harder than he intended, killing him. He takes refuge in a single lady's home. She is not the hysterical type, and although alarmed over this intruder's presence, allows him to stay.

From here we witness a relationship of sorts that develops between the two. Bill may be a thug, but finds himself liking this girl, and wants to know her better. It takes the girl Jane longer to warm up to him but she also starts feeling the same way. She knows he's no saint, but doesn't know of his full recent criminal history, that he's a murderer on the run.

Life isn't going to be easy for this couple, Bill's only way of acquiring money is through theft, mugging, which in the end will result in a prison sentence. After serving his time, Jane is still willing to stick by him, but she has now trouble of her own, in her dealings with a blackmailer who visited her.

From here we witness Bill's attempts to save his girl from trouble with the law, after doing what she did to her blackmailer. His desire to help her and start a new somewhere life for both of them are earnest, but doomed from the start with the seeming hopelessness of their predicament. Whatever good points Bill may have, he's still a vicious thug, a failure, and the future will never be all that bright and hopeful. But his determination to never give up, try and look on the bright side of things, to think that a happy ending for them must come sometime, make him a memorable character.

The book's ending may seem a bit enigmatic, or inconclusive, but I think readers can guess what the fate of the doomed lovers will be. We get a sense of how Bill wished it COULD HAVE been, but to say any more there is going into spoiler territory.

Good to see this one now back in print, it's short and doesn't wear out its welcome.
Hopefully some more of this writer's work will be available to read soon.