The Cutman

 (7 customer reviews)

This is the second title in the exciting Fight Card series co-created (and also written, at least for the first two entries) by Paul Bishop and Mel Odum. Like Bishop's FELONY FISTS, Odum's THE CUTMAN scores an on-the-button KO in the grand old pulp style of the "sports pulp" magazines from the '30s and '40s.
Set in Havana, Cuba, 1954, THE CUTMAN centers on Mickey Flynn, a seaman in port for a few days from the ship Wide Bertha. Mick is a Korean War vet raised in a Chicago orphanage with his brother Patrick. At St. Vincent's Asylum for Boys (aka Our Lady of the Glass Jaw), both brothers were schooled by the nuns but also educated in the "sweet science" of boxing by Father Tim, the fighting priest. This background has left Mickey a tough, competent warrior hardened by conflict in the streets, in rings, and on the battlefield. Never looking for trouble but also never backing down from any, his simple goal these days is to be loyal to his ship, his captain, his crew--and in the...Read more

THE CUTMAN, by Mel Odom writing as Jack Tunney, is the second installment of the new Fight Card series, and it's every bit as good as the debut novel, Paul Bishop's FELONY FISTS.

This one is narrated by Mickey Flynn, brother of Patrick Flynn, the hero of the first book. The Flynn brothers are orphans who grew up at St. Vincent's Orphanage (better known as Our Lady of the Glass Jaw) in Chicago, where they were taught to box by the priest Father Tim. Mickey travels the world as a sailor on the cargo ship Wide Bertha, and as THE CUTMAN opens, the ship is docked at Havana, Cuba, where Mickey and his colorful friends among the crew quickly run afoul of gangsters who have moved in and taken over Havana in those pre-Castro days. The friction escalates until Mick finds himself in the ring battling a vicious boxer who works for one of the local mob kingpins, with the fate of his ship riding on the outcome.

That long, epic battle is a classic, and Mickey Flynn would be...Read more

I read this in one sitting. The setting (Cuba, 1954) is great, and the first-person narration is right on the money. The final bout between Flynn and Simbari is classic stuff. The fate of the good ship WIDE BERTHA is riding on the outcome. Great stuff in the pulp tradition.