Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye

By Horace McCoy

A classic hard-boiled noir, taking the reader on a whirlwind ride from the heights of American society to its seediest depths and back again.
 
Ralph Cotter is an Ivy League graduate, which means he’s smart enough to get himself into prison – and out again. He’s on the run, in a city where he knows no one and no one knows him. With nothing to lose, he might as well shoot for the moon. But he didn’t expect to meet Margaret Dobson, a wealth heiress who sees right through him.
 
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9780735253148

Horace McCoy

Horace McCoy was born near Nashville, Tennessee in 1897. During his lifetime he travelled all over the US as a salesman and taxi-driver, and his varied career included reporting and sports editing, acting as bodyguard to a politician, doubling for a wrestler, and writing for films and magazines. A founder of the celebrated Dallas Little Theatre, his novels include I Should Have Stayed Home (1938), Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948), and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935), which was made into a film. He died in 1955.

Reviews for Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye

[davewilde-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye" is a 1947 novel by McCoy and it was made into a movie, released in 1950 starring James Cagney. That movie was banned in Ohio because of its immorality and that it showed step by step how to commit crimes.

It is too bad McCoy didn't write more novels because what he did write was absolutely terrific. This is noir-era novel that is steeped in darkness and almost never leaves that dark, foreboding world. Cotter is a on a prison work farm somewhere in the South and he's made a deal to get out of there with Holiday, whose young brother is in custody with Cotter. Holiday is sex appeal personified. She is a woman of incredible appetites and almost hypnotizing beauty. She is also a machine-gun toting moll whose loyalty lasts so long as you are in the same room as her. The passionate scenes between McCoy, whose been in custody for two years, and Holiday are powerful to say the least.

With Holiday's help, Cotter escapes the prison work farm and, although initially intent on leaving the nearby town, begins step by step to take it over. The story includes daring, violent armed robberies, crooked cops, and a romance with a wealthy dame whose perfume reminds Cotter of his childhood.

If there is one word to use in describing this book, that would be intensity. The entire story is told in the first person, including Cotter's thoughts and memories. He's tough, hardnosed, bold, and has little loyalty to anyone whose friendship is not to his advantage. Some of the scenes are just awesome such as the prison escape and Cotter's romance with the rich blonde in the sports car. The action doesn't seem to let up in this book.

[datrappert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an extremely strange story of a well-educated, grandmother-obsessed, young man with a very esoteric vocabulary who escapes from prison, takes up with a moll, and goes on a murderous crime spree with the help of a crooked attorney, bent cops, and a few other assorted oddballs. Things get really interesting when he meets a beautiful black-haired woman with a very pale complexion at a quack philosophic lecture. To try to describe this meandering story would pretty much give away what makes it special. If you have read McCoy, you won't be surprised by the dark tone of the whole thing, but it is a much longer and more complex book than They Shoot Horses, Don't They, I Should Have Stayed Home, or No Pockets in a Shroud. I wouldn't be surprised if he was doing a lot of drinking when he wrote this. While some of the surreal quality of the events in undoubtedly intentional, the book is a little too strange to be solely a product of the author's conscious decisions. There are also a few flaws in the book, mostly how the convict manages to move about so freely after his escape in a town not far from the prison. Surely they would have published his picture in every newspaper!This was made into a film with James Cagney and Barbara (I Am Not Ashamed) Payton, which amazingly I have never seen. From the descriptions, it seems to stick pretty closely to the book, reflecting both its wildness and its flaws.