Gutter Girl is another unwholesome gem credited to Lawrence Block, writing under the pseudonym Andrew Shaw. Between this book and the equally noteworthy (and far more hateful), The Sadist (reviewed by me elsewhere), I read a "legit" Block novel, The Sins of the Fathers, the first in his long running Matt Scudder series.
Hm.
Both sleaze books have plenty of sexuality and depravity, but also heart and immediacy, whereas the mainstream book has a disenfranchised guy piecing together a mystery, wherein most of the unpleasantness is told second and third hand after the fact and cobbled together. The Scudder book was fine but completely forgettable, excepting only the very strong conclusion.
Obviously, I prefer the vivid and harrowing sleaze books, though of course reading such stuff requires an acceptance of some gratuitous sexuality (likely required by the publisher to match the cover).
A good comparison for Gutter Girl are those great pre-code gems that crept out of ancient Hollywood--things like Three on a Match or Two Seconds---in that the tale is a simply presented story of a person whose desires and ambitions drive them to fleeting happiness, desperate actions, and terrible decisions. In this one, the titular Gutter Girl is Donna Waldek, and her story is not a happy one. This lower east side deb for a teen gang moves neighborhoods and strives to improve her situation (and that of her kid brother), but the environments and circumstances and her own morals drive her onward toward trouble. More than a few times I was reminded of Richard Price's The Wanderers (which it predates), and a book of early 1960s gang life with kids this outrageously nasty would have been engrossing enough, but the story and environment progress with the character into a more expansive tale.
Donna is flawed, but rendered quite sympathetically and with far more depth than the copy on the back cover would lead one to suspect and this book is wholly her story. This short novel yields the violence and sexuality that's advertised--it's dirty and has a few moments of violence that would throw this into an NC-17 rating--but Block does not at all sidestep the psychological cost of such a lifestyle. Different readers will have very different reactions with this one for certain, and the unexpected conclusion makes for a very uncomfortable reading experience.
In a way, the story obliquely and coolly investigated in Sins of the Father is the main story here in Gutter Girl--there are more than a few parallels--but the latter sleaze is the far more emotionally engaging experience. I'm certainly more interested in complex characterization of flawed humans who are their own worst enemies than in the question, "whodunnit?"
I'll continue to read more Block, and I'm curious to see if unfiltered, Sleazy Block continues to trump legit Bestselling Block in terms of quality and emotional resonance.