Kiss Me, Judas [Paperback]

Baer Will Christopher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 2004

Ex-cop Phineas Poe, suspected of murdering his young wife, has been in a mental hospital but is now in a Denver hotel. He meets Jude, and wakes up in a bath full of ice with one of his kidneys missing. Things start getting complicated when Phineas falls in love with Jude.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In his extremely dark but very effective first thriller, former cabdriver and homeless counselor Will Christopher Baer takes that old urban legend of the man who wakes up in a hotel bathtub full of ice to discover that somebody has removed one of his kidneys and whips it up into a modernized Edgar Allan Poe nightmare. Baer's hero is in fact called Phineas Poe--an ex-cop who spent six years digging up dirt in and on the Denver P.D.'s Internal Affairs Division. On his first night out after a nervous breakdown and a six-month stay in a psychiatric hospital, Poe is picked up by a prostitute named Jude who drugs his drink and deftly removes his kidney.

Poe heads for the Witch's Teat, a sex shop where his friend Crumb works. "Crumb isn't really a doctor. He does cheap abortions and gunshot wounds and even dental work for the mad and desperate," Baer writes in deceptively plain present-tense prose, which quickly mesmerizes like electronic music. "Crumb reads a lot. He has a closet full of old surgical textbooks and a lot of stolen equipment. And he doesn't try to fake you. If you come to him with a ruptured bowel or a crushed spine, he gives you a cup of tea and sends you to the hospital." Poe learns that his kidney has been replaced by a bag of heroin--which could kill him if it dissolves. Intent on retrieving his stolen organ, he traces Jude to a bowling alley called the Inferno. Strangely enough, with Jude he reluctantly discovers the chance of love and family that he thought was gone forever when his wife died. In lesser hands, this flash of light in a roomful of noir could easily have spoiled everything. But Baer makes it all seem as natural as whistling in the dark. --Dick Adler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Although there are obvious biblical allusions in Baer's stylized debut, this noir tale takes no clearly biblical route. The characters' names promise a governing metaphor: there's Jude, an alluring sociopath; Eve, a black-tongued lesbian; Rose White, a virginal med student; and a bowling alley called the Inferno. There's also a beautiful young man afflicted since birth with HIV (born to die) who begs for a kiss before his demise. Even the title foreshadows a betrayal of biblical proportions. Yet this unrelentingly dark story, set in Colorado and Texas, features mostly underworld characters and a surreal sense of reality. Narrator Phineas Poe, a former investigator for the internal affairs division of Denver's police department, offers only a hallucinatory account that is both compelling and confusing. Just released from a psychiatric hospital, he meets Jude, has sex and awakens in a tub full of ice. He discovers that she's cut into him and stolen one of his kidneys. Despite his weakened state, he tracks her down. On his way, he encounters the Blister, a corrupt cop who reveals that Jude replaced his kidney with a bag of heroin and is using him to smuggle dope. Should the bag dissolve, Poe will die. Should he remove it, he might find a bomb. On the other hand, Jude may be exploiting him as a live carrier of his other kidney for efficient delivery to the man with the money. Poe definitely has problems, not the least of which is the haunting memory of his wife's wretched death. His dilemma only worsens when he joins Jude in her nefarious career, falls in love with her and anticipates her betrayal. Yet she's not what she seems and where they ultimately end up provides this intriguing tale with a quirky, redemptive glow. Editor, Courtney Hodell; agent; Daniel Mandel. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 316 pages
• Publisher: MacAdam/Cage (September 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193156180X
• ISBN-13: 978-1931561808
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,569,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born 1966 in Mississippi. Lived in Montreal and Italy as a child. Graduated high school in Memphis, TN. Received MFA (1995) at Naropa U, Boulder, CO. Worked as taxi driver, journalist, and migrant college professor. Recently co-authored screenplay for Kiss Me, Judas, now in development with Mythic Films. Short stories have appeared in BOMB, nerve.com, the Cult, and elsewhere. Recent shorts include "Deception of the Thrush," SF Noir (Akashic), and "Fugitive Tendencies," postscript to the UK edition of The Contortionist's Handbook, (Harper-Collins UK). Status of much anticipated and long overdue fourth novel, the horror noir Godspeed, is unknown. WCB is married, two children. He currently teaches fiction and screenwriting at the Memphis College of Art.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Scary Love Story, September 26, 2004

By 

Logan Rapp "Student / Writer unpublished" (Fresno, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kiss Me, Judas (Paperback)

"Kiss Me, Judas" is summed up nicely by the author himself when he calls it a "scary love story." Many other authors would have used the basic premise of the storyline - the harvesting of one's kidney while the donor is alive and unwilling - to delve into the underbelly of today's black market, but Chris Baer uses it as a dark and gritty backdrop to the core theme he wants us to recognize, and that is of modern-day love and loss.

Baer writes the way everyone aspires to - brutally honest and open. When everyone else has the secrets of their hearts sealed in a box and guarded with sentries, Chris has his unlocked and painted on every page as if writing in his own journal. The things that we lack the courage to even whisper to ourselves are exposed and illuminated for all the world to see and reading it puts Baer's very soul in the limelight.

Each turn of the page slashes another razorblade across his wrist and we ache with every darkly heartfelt comment that Phineas makes. The aching of the protagonist is compelling and the constant questioning of what is real or imagined, true love or false hope, guilt or innocence, puts a ray of light into our own minds, into the questions that we subconsciously ask ourselves but we don't have the fortitude to actually ponder honestly.

Baer shows us how love can bring you to the brink of self-destruction, and how it can also pull you out of the depths. These pages are bruising to the soul, but ultimately cathartic. This is a novel that we need to read, because love is the only feeling that can make anyone fall, but it can keep us from falling, too.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Twisted Love Story, September 27, 2004

By 

Nick "topbunknoose" (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kiss Me, Judas (Paperback)

So we have one lady complaining that Baer doesn't use quotation marks and it made it difficult to read and one man complaining about the names of things. I'm going to try and write a better review than either of those.

This story is the first in a trilogy [with Penny Dreadful and Hell's Half Acre rounding out the three] where the protagonist Phineas Poe has his kidney stolen by Jude after he is released from a mental institute after a nervous breakdown in Internal Affairs. What follows is the muddled trek of one man in a drugged stupor that's just trying to get his kidney back and the girl.

Baer's strength resides in his awesome ability to describe things. For instance when Phineas tries to remember what Jude he says, "Red dress, black hair, body like a knife..." showing that she has a sleek, strong, and dangerous body. He also keeps things short to mimick Phineas's own short thought patterns. He thinks like he's drugged and just wants to see beyond that and that's how you read it. He tries to kill people, but can't and you know he has a heart somewhere in his frail body. Even Jude can't help herself.

Despite all of the violence and drugs surrounding him, Phineas makes ends of things and finds a way to make things work and that's what matters in the end. He comes to terms with his fragmented thoughts, his wife's death, Jude's theft, and all the other people involved.

As for the title being Kiss Me, Judas it works, because in the end that's all Phineas wants.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Holy Crap, April 4, 2004

By 

Amber (Boston. MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kiss Me, Judas: A Novel (Hardcover)

I had no idea what to expect when I picked this up. Wow was I surprised. This story is completely original. Phineas is a very strange character. I found myself wondering if this all was a brief hallusination, or if these things were in fact occuring. I would love to see them weave this story into a movie. This book is not for all. I loved to be grossed out, and read things just for pure shock value. Any book where the protagionst awakens with a missing kidney-is a book I love to read. I would reccomend this to anyone who enjoys anything out of the norm.