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David Goodis
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Cassidy's Girl Kindle Edition

by David Goodis (Author), Larry Withers (Foreword) Format: Kindle Edition
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 114 ratings
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They say that a man needs a woman to go to hell with. Cassidy had two. One was Mildred, the wife who kept him chained with ties of fear and jealousy and paralyzing sexual need. The other was Doris, a frail angel with a 100-proof halo and a bottle instead of a harp. With those two, Cassidy found that the ride to hell could be twice as fast.

Goodis holds his rightful place in the pantheon of noir writers, alongside Jim Thompson, Cornell Woolrich, and Charles Williams. His writing stays true and never wavers, is never prettified. His characters always come so close to some vision of happiness only to have things screw up. And in the end Goodis leaves us with slight consolation; the understanding that things could be worse.
While my personal introduction to Goodis is particular, my admiration for him is shared by the multitude of hardcore noir fans. If this is your first introduction to David Goodis, then you’re in for a treat.
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  1. Print length
    165 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publication date
    September 29, 2018
  5. Grade level
    12 and up
  6. File size
    2449 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07HWHCYQP
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Black Pudding Publishing (September 29, 2018)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 29, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2449 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 165 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 114 ratings

About the author

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David Goodis

David Goodis

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Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
114 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars AOK noir
Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2022
Verified Purchase
If you're into Jim Thompson, you will really get a kick out of this offering from Goodis! It's swell! Do yourself a favor!
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robin friedman
4.0 out of 5 stars Philadelphia Tenderloin
Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2012
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David Goodis' novel, "Cassidy's Girl" offers a portrayal of lost people in forgotten streets of Philadelphia in the years following WW II. The characters in the story are tormented and fallen. They struggle with alcohol and with their own demons. Goodis portrays them rawly yet with sympathy. The book is as much about atmosphere as about character. The story is set in the bars, tenements, narrow streets of the old Delaware River harbor and waterfront. I am familiar with parts of the Philadelphia that Goodis describes from the time I lived in the city years ago. But many of the places and scenes described in the book had already been lost.

The primary character of the book Jim Cassidy, 36, drives a bus between Philadelphia and Easton for a cut-rate company with headquarters on Arch Street. Here is how Goodis introduces Cassidy and the theme of the book at the outset of the novel.

"The bus made a turn of Market Street, went up through the slashing rain to Arch, went into the depot. Cassidy climbed out, opened the door,stood there to help them down from the bus. He had the habit of studying their faces as they emerged, wondering what their thoughts were, and what their lives were made of. The old women and the girls, the frowning stout men with loose flesh hanging from their jaws, and the young men who gazed dully ahead as though seeing nothing. Cassidy looked at their faces and had an idea he could see the root of their trouble. It was the fact that they were ordinary people and they didn't know what real trouble was. He could tell them. He could damn well tell them."

Cassidy spends his evening fighting with his voluptuous but shrewish wife Mildred and drinking at a cheap establishment called Lundy's Place. Earlier in his life, Cassidy had flown planes in WW II and then commercially. When he was blamed falsely for a plane accident, Cassidy's life deteriorated. He squandered his money and ultimately found himself in the Philadelphia tenderloin. When he secures the job as a bus driver, Cassidy gains a small sense of purpose and control that he does not feel otherwise.

After a particularly harsh fight with his Mildred, Cassidy learns that she is interested in another patron of Lundy's Place, Haney Kendick. In his turn, Cassidy becomes involved with a young woman, Doris, 27, who is slender and withdrawn and an irredemable alcoholic. As the story develops, Goodis explores which of these women, Mildred or Doris, consitutes "Cassidy's Girl".

The book includes many scenes of violence, heavy drinking, sex, and tragedy. It is also highly introspective as each of the down and out characters has his or her own story. Cassidy is forced to flee when he is accused of causing an accident in driving the bus eerily similar to the accident years earlier with the plane. For all the rage and hopelessness of the characters and the setting, the book comes to a resolution that is slightly less hopeless than is the case in some of Goodis' later novels.

Beginning in 1951, Goodis (1917 -- 1967) published a number of paperback noir novels most of which are set in his native Philadelphia. The novels offer a noir portrayal of the city and of the loneliness of urban life. "Cassidy's Girl" sold over a million copies when it was published in 1951 but was soon forgotten. With the Library of America's recent publications of "Down There" (Shoot the Piano Player)  Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s: The Killer Inside Me / The Talented Mr. Ripley / Pick-up / Down There / The Real Cool Killers (Library of America) (Vol 2)  followed by its publication of a volume of five Goodis novels, David Goodis: Five Noir Novels of the 1940s and 50s (Library of America) , Goodis dark world has achieved a place in American literature. Readers who come to Goodis through the Library of America volumes will enjoy exploring his other novels, including "Cassidy's Girl".

Robin Friedman
13 people found this helpful
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J.E. Corny
3.0 out of 5 stars 3 out of 5 Late Nights in the Secret Room at Bar for the Regulars Only
Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2016
Verified Purchase
Jim Cassidy is a loser.

His friends, who he doesn't hate, are losers.

His wife, Mildred, who he hates (the feeling is most-assuredly mutual), is too a loser. It would be a shame for Cassidy if she was his girl.

Cassidy spends his nights surrounded by losers at the local loser bar after his dead-end loser job as a bus driver. It hadn't always been this way for Cassidy. It wasn't always a one-way ticket to nowhere alongside the local drunks at the watering hole hovering above the Philadelphia docks.

It wasn't too long ago when Cassidy had it all. A former football hero turned World War II ace fighter pilot who settled into a great post war career as a commercial airline pilot. But then, as it goes in these tales (and pick you pun wherever you'd like coming up), Cassidy's world came down in a heap of flames, taking the rap for a plane crash that left a lot of people dead. The co-pilot suggested that Cassidy was flying drunk. Cassidy claimed otherwise. But hey, the damage was done and Cassidy's life was ruined and shortly thereafter Cassidy became a card-carrying lowlife.

The plot kicks off after another day on the job when all Cassidy wants when he comes home is a doting wife who has a meal ready to go for him. As far as Cassidy is concerned, it's the least she could do for him. Unfortunately, he married Mildred, who instead has left their place in shambles after an all day booze fest where they couldn't even have the damn decency to clean up the spilled booze and blood.

Cassidy decides he's had enough and that he's leaving Mildred and this life behind him. He puts all his hopes and dreams on a new face at the local bar, a plain, fading thin, world-class alcoholic named Doris. Perhaps Doris is Cassidy's Girl after all? Wouldn't that be nice? The two of them could start a new life together without Mildred and without the drink or Cassidy would be damned.

And as we know after reading enough noir, the poor bastard Cassidy is indeed damned. You punch the wrong fella in the bar... even if he is some fat slob who pines after Mildred (she's still his wife, even if she's a hated one) and everything goes downhill from there.

For awhile, the plot runs at a compelling breakneck pace as the proverbial noose tightens around Cassidy's neck. Sometimes the writing is too fast as feels more like a plot summary, but there are moments when Goodis slows down and really takes his time. One sequence in particular is a great example in which Cassidy, seeming on the verge of a clean getaway, imagines what his new life will be like. It's ultimately heart-breaking because you know it's never going to pan out that way for him. And I think Cassidy knows this too. Perhaps that's why he allows himself so much time to indulge in his fantasy life.

Unfortunately, a lot of the steam is let out as the final chapters unfold into an almost surreal, hyper-sexual, deus ex machina ending. It feels forced and rushed. but that's the case with a lot of the old pulp authors who cranked out work a rapid pace.

The dialogue is fun, but strays into the hokey more often than it should.

Flaws aside, Cassidy's Girl is a fun read from an author who doesn't always make the casual reader's list of must-read noir or pulp writers, but Goodis' work is worth the time, especially for fans of the genre.

Cassidy's Girl by David Goodis - 3 out of 5 Late Nights in the Secret Room at Bar for the Regulars Only
2 people found this helpful
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Mark O'Brien
5.0 out of 5 stars This is True Grit
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2017
I picked this book up right after reading Night Squad, which was my introduction to David Goodis. To say Goodis is a master of the noir genre is to do him an understated disservice. The characters in his nihilistic world don't find redemption. For the lucky few, redemption finds them. And many of them recall the characters from Bruce Springsteen's Jungleland: "They wind up wounded, not even dead." Fiction doesn't get any grittier than Goodis.
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RaDadIndy
4.0 out of 5 stars Tough call
Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2009
Verified Purchase
This book is a tough call for me. On the one hand, the plot depends on a 1 in 1 million event that occurs twice (with slight variation). That's a bit much for me to swallow, especially in a genre where a big part of the illusion is the gritty "realism" of the story. On the other hand, I happen to like this kind of writing:

"He could see the bottle rising to her lips, and then her lips meeting the lips of the bottle, as though the bottle were something alive, making love to her. . . he saw the bottle as a loathsome, grotesque creature that had lured Doris and captured her and pleasured itself with her, draining the sweet life from her body as it poured its rottenness into her."

If this kind of writing is not quite your style, then this is a book to skip. If this leaves you wanting more, then the improbability of the plot should not stop you from diving in.
2 people found this helpful
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