Customer Reviews

Pay Here

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4 star:		(1)
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Noir mysteries are the tragedies of the genre. The main character is usually a man with a mysterious past, marred by violence and memories of lost love, both of which still haunt him. This jaded character is brought out of his self-absorption by a mission, and during the course of the mission, he meets an innocent. The tension in the story is less about solving a mystery than the contrast between the world-weary and naive characters and the foreshadowing of a tragic ending. The reader is glued to the pages in the hope that the ending won't be as tragic as the author is hinting. Because you would really like for everyone to live happily ever after, but you just know it isn't going to happen. I am pleased to say that in PAY HERE, Kelly takes the standard noir formula and does an excellent job with it.

PAY HERE starts with a funeral. Our innocent, Daly Marcus, arrives in Arizona to meet up with her old friend, Rhea Montero, only to discover that Rhea died the day before. A shaken Daly makes her way to the funeral, where she meets our tragic hero Michael Callan. It quickly becomes clear to Daly that Callan isn't asking questions about Rhea because he is a fellow mourner, but because he is an investigative reporter and he is trying to pump her for information about Rhea's shady dealings for his planned newspaper story.

In Callan, an Irish reporter transplanted to Phoenix, Arizona, Kelly has created a man who possesses both beautiful words and a heritage of violence - the almost poetic description of the world around him emphasizes the despair he carries within him. Callan is a man who does what he needs to in order to survive, but he still recognizes innocence and longs for what he might have been if his life had been different. He tries to protect the naïve Daly when, without realizing it, she sets off a lethal chain reaction. Callan is both worried about her safety and pleased that events are moving his story forward. The question is, when the bodies start piling up, will Callan protect Daly or use her as bait to draw out the big fish?

PAY HERE is a short book with a simple, but well-executed plot. And Kelly displays his talent for description and dialog by not belaboring it. With one or two powerful lines he gives intriguing glimpses into Callan's past or character and draws the reader deeper into the story. There are several one-liners that are just gutwrenching. Those are my favorite parts of PAY HERE - you'll know them when you get there.

Favorite character? Callan. Did I guess it? Yes. This one you read for the writing. Will I read another? Yes. The classic noir story, the concise writing, the modern setting, and the timely plot all make PAY HERE an interesting and very good read. Frankly, he sucked me in and I am not usually a noir fan.

Recipe: Combine one battered, embittered hero with one naïve young woman and an earnest, experienced cop; season with a blend of totally bad apples, a frighteningly contemporary twist of evil, and bake under a blazing Arizona sun. If it sounds like noir in the desert, you got it right. Veteran investigative reporter Charles Kelly pays tribute to the hard-boiled dick tradition of the Hammett/Chandler school with his own interpretation of the genre, in this case an emotionally bruised investigative reporter who wants only to nail the crooks and write the story, no matter what the price. He almost pays it, of course, along with the ninny-ette, who follows him around and nearly foils his best efforts at every turn because of an almost saintly belief in the essential goodness of man - or in this case, woman. You know, of course, that there is redemption of a sort and that it all turns out okay in the end, but what the hell; you've been down this road before and you know that it's bumpy and pot-holed, curvy, full of fallen debris and other dangers. But it's why you take the ride. So enjoy it.

The question is, can one write noir in the blinding Arizona sun. Charles Kelly pulled it off. Sun and heat notwithstanding PAY HERE is a dark and chilly tale of modern America on the edge. A strip-joint captain, a defrocked lawyer, and an entrepreneurial sawbones are among the marginales with whom Arizona reporter Michael Callan butts heads, that is, when he's not ducking bullets. Callan has to figure out who, what, and why when the subjects of his story are shooting back and his editor is trying to dump him. The pay off comes . . . . I think you'll have to buy the book.

Dan

"Pay Here," a first novel by Charles Kelly, offers Michael Callan, a tough Irishman who grew up in the streets of Belfast but who doesn't drink and who somehow latched onto a lifeline when he found he could scratch a living and still live with himself as a reporter. Decades down the road, he's in Arizona tracking down the truth about an ex-girlfriend who is trouble as trouble can be. Callan sticks obsessively to the story, his story. He is one of those bad-guy journalists who become legends for their screwy lifestyles as much as their stories. He battles editors, packs heat more often than necessary and disappears for weeks at a time. Though a fast-moving thriller, "Pay Here" is most interesting for its philosophical overtones and asides, most often expressed in Callan's failed-Catholic misgivings. There's some fine writing here and a bittersweet aftertaste that leaves the reader wishing for more. Kelly stumbles from time to time as many first novelists do, but like his hero, when he's on, he's really on.

This novel may be best desribed as noir in some sense, but to me it was action, mystery, suspense, and intrigue in any form. I too was struck by the sudden twists, usually hinged within tight chapters and turning on a single phrase, yet I was most affected by the continual barrage of dust and heat and gravel and dirt and heat and sun and dust and bleak and brown that is the Arizona desert. Yes, I wrote dust and heat twice because that is what it felt like. Charles Kelly conjures the setting as a living antagonist, and this adds layers of tension to this novel as if Callan will fail against nature itself. When even the elemental forces are against him, the reader feels the dread, which, in turn, mimicks the lifelessness found in the life-killing heat. In these parts of the book, which are many, the textures lift from the page into a lasting effect on the reader, long after the book is read. I only wanted more. This is a shorter novel, quick, fast-paced, much like the plot, but when it comes to the atmospheric elements, I want more, more, more. Great book! We need more books like this.

This hard-boiled novel pits a big-city newspaper reporter against a gang of immigrant smugglers and killers in an area of the Southwest that is growing so fast few controls are in place. Charles Kelly spins this yarn materfully as you would expect from a writer of a top ewspaper reporter. The novel begins with a funeral and takes many twists and surprising turns. It is a page turner.
But the mystery itself, as good as it is, has other aspects that will edify the reader. Kelly, a longtime investigative reporter for a large Southwestern newspaper, discloses bit by bit some of the very best reporting techniques newspapermen use when pursuing criminals. These reporting techniques give the book an air of authenticity that usually is lacking in most other novels of this type.
And lastly, Kelly gives his readers a real understanding of the Southwestern desert and the cities that have sprung up in it. You can feel desert dust, wade through the squaler of the low-rent areas and understand the make-up and attitudes of those hardy persons who have made the desert their home.
Pay Here is a five-star story that is far more than skin deep.

let me get straight to the point: Buy this book. Finally someone gets Phoenix right. A noir tour-de-force that hits all the genre's high points. A terrific read.

"Pay Here" is sharp and propulsive, with prose so evocative that I found myself repeatedly rereading lines for the pure pleasure of finding language used with wit and originality. It's one of those rare novels that brings to life all the senses. Chuck Kelly has written a dark gem of a novel. It'll be over before you realize it, and then you, too, will find yourself rereading passages as striking and stark as the Arizona desert. Kudos to Kelly.

Crime novels aren't ordinarily my bag, but Charles Kelly has made me a convert. The reluctant hero of his new novel, Pay Here, is a cynical, romantic, semi-reformed tough guy who cut his teeth on the streets of Belfast, Ireland. Just my type. By the time readers meet Michael Callan - an Irishman who doesn't drink, go figure - he's middle-aged and living in Phoenix, Arizona, where a loosely-defined reporting job at a local newspaper drives him to fist fights, a love affair, and perpetual avoidance of his editor, Frye. Callan thrives on the edgy energy of his chosen desert home, a city he describes as ``a frantic, unruly place, dirty and delectable at once.'' The plot is consuming and topical, given the location: Callan is tracking a chain of mutilated immigrants. But in the midst of all the mystery, author Charles Kelly finds time for terse and often hilarious commentary on the falling standards of newspapers and how it feels to live in one of America's fastest-growing cities. In short, you don't have to be a crime buff to love this book.