Savage Night
Guthrie writes a brand of crime novel that recalls the film Reservoir Dogs. You know the characters are going to meet a bad end—the only question is what will happen to them on the way. They’re not sympathetic, either, but for those inclined toward schadenfreude, there’s good fun in watching their bad decisions pile up until the resulting garbage heap tips over and crushes them all. Closer in tone and concept to Hard Man (2007) than to the more restrained and superior Kiss Her Goodbye (2005), Savage Night suggests a Scottish Hatfield-McCoy feud as two criminally minded clans, the Savages and the Parks, square off over a misunderstanding that flares into all-out war. Guthrie twists the plot, chops up the timeframe, and toys with point-of-view, so much so that it sometimes takes us a moment to figure out which doofus we’re watching now. Never a dull moment, but we still couldn’t help but feel that it should be either funnier or—God help us—even darker. Chase with a pint and a packet of crisps. --Keir Graff