My three previous experiences of Alfred Hayes have each been excellent, in their different ways, like Edward Hopper paintings in written form. But while The End of Me again brings forth those desolate Hopper-like characters, it is a lesser read. This time, Hayes forgets to bring that all-important light which Hopper never failed to add, and which really makes the composition into a work of art.

Hayes' previous books were all about a vision of a good world that our characters were too broken to reach; The End of Me, instead, has an almost nihilistic vision. There's no good country for old men, nor for young men or women either, and while our protagonist, Asher, claims to refute the poet Michael's depiction of a world "more destructive, more finally poisoned… aimed at one like a gun" (pg. 59), there's not really anything in his journey which really supports it. Both Asher and Michael – and the improbably-named Aurora d'Amore, the vampish girl in this love triangle – have a bitter and nihilistic worldview. Though Michael is malicious with it – and has the support of Aurora in this – Asher is also willing to destroy. He is willing to destroy himself – he wants to be "demolished" (pg. 147) by these children and their "terrible games" (pg. 134).

Those who have read anything by Hayes won't be surprised by this content, but it doesn't take as well in The End of Me as it does in other novels. The writing itself, though accomplished, is just less remarkable. There's no phrase as potent as the "delayed ship moving slowly south" that I noted in my review of My Face for the World to See. The book's snowy New York setting isn't evoked even half as well as the noirish Rome in The Girl on the Via Flaminia. And Aurora isn't given the opportunity to make a counterpoint that makes the female character in In Love redeemable, and instead alternates cartoonishly between cruel vamp and fragile doormat.

The character dynamics are less clear than the main relationship conflicts in Face (a toxic May-December romance), Flaminia (a wartime sex-for-food trade between victor and conquered) or In Love (an Indecent Proposal-style proposition). How Asher is suckered into the events of The End of Me are understandable, but the baseless cruelty of Michael and Aurora ("as though, from the beginning, [they'd] been collecting a dossier" (pg. 108)) is more confusing. Young people with their "terrible games" played on the older man, perhaps, like pulling the wings off flies, but such a depiction feels a tad shallow and isn't explored. Consequently, for the reader the book exists in a sort of haze, with Hayes' usual noirish coolness hardening into impenetrable ice rather than distilling into the chill that, in his better novels, can take your breath away. ( )