The
Big Kiss by David Huggins is a truly bizarre mystery about greed, murder, and
hallucination. It is an English period piece about the mores and lifestyle of
the 90s. This mystery seeks to explore the tenuous nature of self-reliance when
psychotropic drugs changes the nature of personal reality.

The
Big Kiss is set in 1990s London. As the novel opens, Steve Cork, the
marketing partner of the Puffa Group, designers of men’s fashions, has returned
from a dinner party to pick up his car that is parked outside of Alan Denton’s
house. Alan is a financial wunderkind and Puffa’s newly hired financial
consultant. In the process, Steve overhears a violent fight coming from inside
the house and observes Alan’s girlfriend, Claire Vogel’s, car parked in the
driveway. Calling from a nearby payphone, Steve hears further evidence of
physical violence. Upon returning to the house, he finds the house dark,
Claire’s car gone, but also blood on the porch stoop. The following morning,
Alan claims that he turned in early and denies that anything unusual occurred
at his house after the dinner party. Oddly, within days, Steve finds himself
fired from Puffa, a company he created, in marital distressed with his wife,
and finally, confined to a mental institution “for his own good” all seemingly
orchestrated by Alan. Steve believes that what he overheard at Alan’s house is
the crux of his current situation. Unfortunately, having been recently release
from a mental institution and now on psychotropic drugs to control his supposed
hallucinations, Steve finds it almost impossible to convince anyone, especially
the police, that he may have overheard a murder, that the murderer has taken
control of his company, a doppelganger may be sleeping with his wife, and that
the murderer is still after him. Is he
hallucinating, paranoid, or are the people whom he once held so dear, really
his greatest enemies? As the old saying goes, “just because you are paranoid,
does not mean they aren’t out to get you.”

The
Big Kiss is a very unusual novel. In part, the novel is a satirical send-up
of the 1990s with its roller coaster economics, superficial but expense status
symbols, and drugs as an answer lifestyle. This book humorously depicts the 90s
at its glitziest and meaningless worst. On the other hand, the book is an
agonizing depiction of an individual grappling with reality as filtered through
mind-altering drugs and mental illness. When buildings turn into colorful
bubbles that exploding into flashing lights, how can one judge if what one sees
and hears and seems very plausible is or is real? That is Steve’s dilemma.
Finally, there is the mystery. The plot line is very complex. Even without the
complications of mental illness and drugs, it is mind twisting.

David Huggins lives in London.
Huggins has written three novels The Big
Kiss (1997), Luxury Amnesia
(2001) and Me Me Me (UK
2001). Me Me Me, his latest novel, is
currently not available in the United States. The Big Kiss was his first novel. 

The Big Kiss by David Huggins is a complex novel. It is part
psychological novel, part satirical period piece, and part murder mystery. The
plot is old, but the setting is new and interesting. A fast read.

© 2002 Su Terry

Su Terry: Education:
B.A. in History from Sacred Heart University, M.L.S. in Library Science from
Southern Connecticut State College, M.R.S. in Religious Studies/Pastoral
Counseling from Fairfield University, a M.Div. in Professional Ministry from
New Brunswick Theological Seminary, a Certificate in Spirituality/Spiritual
Direction from Sacred Heart University. She is a Licensed Minister of the
United Church of Christ and an Assistant Professor in Library Science at
Dowling College, Long Island, NY. Interests in Mental Health: She is interested
in the interplay between psychology, biology, and mysticism. Her current area
of research is in the impact of hormonal fluctuation in female Christian mystics.

Categories: Fiction