Kiss Me, Judas

The Story

Will Christopher Baer's hypnotic debut novel merges the best of the noir tradition with a scalpel-sharp modern sensibility. When ex-cop Phineas Poe is released from a six-month stay in a Denver psychiatric hospital, he meets a savage and unsentimental woman named Jude. After a drunken night with her, Phineas awakens in a bathtub packed with ice, holding a soggy note that reads 'if you want to live, call 911.' Jude has taken one of his kidneys. This phantasmagoric tale follows Poe as he pursues, and falls for, the mysterious Jude and is plunged into an edgy, drug-blurred underworld inhabited by a gleeful cast of sinister characters. Fast, furious, and glittering with a razor-sharp wit, this is a startling novel of modern noir.