McGuire and his ad hoc family are far from saints and many would consider his allies enemies, but all carry a code that keeps them from falling over that edge into the dark abyss they’re standing over. Stallings deals with damaged characters pushed to societies’ edges, trapped in the hypocrisy. The McGuire books echoe the work of James Crumley, Newton Thornburg, and other crime novelists of the ’70s.
The story is told with a heart as hard as concrete, but it beats with longing and lament. He gets involved with the mob, porn, an FBI sting, and a sister who may not be completely trustworthy. With the blind purpose of Mike Hammer, McGuire trudges along a trail of violence and vengeance that takes him to San Fransisco and brothels outside Las Vegas. He goes after the killer of one such woman in his debut, Beautiful, Naked, & Dead. He has the look of a Viking in biker leather with an attitude to match and a flaw of romanticising women to an unrealistic point they can never meet. He earned his skills as a Marine in Beirut and inmate in the California penal system. McGuire is an ex mafia enforcer now working as a strip club bouncer.
Those three traits could also describe his series character, Moses McGuire. To borrow from Waylon Jennings, his books are “lonesome, on’ry, and mean”. This made his down and dirty crime fiction even more amazing. When I met Josh Stallings at the Cleveland Bouchercon, I found him to be a warm guy, full of life.
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