Kid: "Never carried a rod until now..."

“About Kid Deth,” by Raoul Whitfield was such an action-packed story that every once in awhile, I found myself confused with the characters involved in the story. The main character was Joey Deth. The people in town knew him as “Kid”. It seemed like Kid was always getting himself into situations that he should not have been in. When it came to the plot of this story it started off at a fast pace. He was immediately picked up by a policeman, Lou Rands, that apparently had never been able to get enough on Kid to keep him locked up. There was a man in the car with them, Barney Nasser, whom Kid had seen around before. Barney Nasser was dead. Rands was attempting to frame Kid as a way to get him locked away for good. All of a sudden, Kid and Rands begin to wrestle and shots are fired. These shots are not from Kid and Rands however, they are from across the street which hits Rands and kills him. Frightened, Kid runs down an alleyway to flee the scene. At one o’clock, like he had previously told Rands, he met with a woman, Bess Grotes, at the cellar for their date. The story escalates and Bess gets shot and killed. The rest of the story is a confusing plot which results in many more deaths and killings between the other characters in the story.
I had a little bit of a hard time keeping track of who was who in the story and how they related to the other characters in the cast. It seemed to me that the main characters were Kid and Bess, as the criminals, and Rands and the Nausser brothers, as the law. As in any other noir, the criminal is usually the good guy and the law is considered to be the bad. The story only continued on as a way for Kid to find justice in Bess’ murder. Bess, the femme fatale, was trying to keep Kid safe by not allowing him to go out the back door like they had wanted him to and in turn put herself in danger. What I liked most about this story was that Kid “never carried a rod.” He admits that he never had carried a gun until he found out that a woman had been murdered. I do not see why or how the police force has put him in the category of a criminal. He seems to be the one finding justice, not the cops. Overall, I definitely feel like “About Kid Deth” fits the definition of a film noir.

Questions:

1. Was there a significance to Kid’s last name being “Deth”?
2. What was the real story behind Bess Grote?
3. Did Kid get away with everything in the end and do you think he was truly involved with the rest of the deaths in the story?