Review of The Getaway by Jim Thompson (1958, Orion)

Doc McCoy is a career criminal.  After his wife, Carol, manages to bribe the chair of a patrol board and springs him from jail he sets about arranging his next heist with Rudy ‘Piehead’ Torrento.  The robbery of the Beacon City Bank goes according to plan, leaving the security guard and their accomplice dead.  However, McCoy and Torrento immediately fall out, with the latter shot and left for dead.  McCoy and Carol head west, aiming to get to California.  Their journey though is full of mishaps.  With the cops and a vengeful Torrento on their trail, the question is whether they can escape to Mexico with their loot?

The Getaway is considered a classic heist novel and has been adapted for the big screen a couple of times.  The premise is straightforward.  A gang of four criminals successfully heist a bank then immediately fall out and set upon each other.  One is left dead before they have even left the bank.  Doc McCoy, the gang mastermind, and Rudy fight and separate not far out of town.  McCoy and his wife, Carol, take flight, but her lack of experience and Rudy’s murderous pursuit soon derails their plans.  Moreover, despite their continued devotion, a seed of doubt and suspicion has been planted in the mind of each.  Thompson keeps the pace high, with plenty of action and twists, while also exploring the evolving relationship between Doc and Carol.  The result is an engaging and tense read that delivers both the spills and thrills of a heist and chase and the psychopathology of those involved.  The weak spot, however, is the ending which swivels ninety degrees into an entirely different register.  It might be literary and allegorical, but felt entirely out of place.

Review of The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (1952, Orion)

Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a well liked and respected member of Central City’s community. He’s known for being good with problem prisoners, able to talk them round, and being somewhat over-friendly with the public. But it’s all part of Ford’s strategy to manage his ‘sickness’ after the death of his father and his adopted brother, Mike, killed on a construction site owned by Chester Conway. Mike had been sent to reform school for sexually assaulting a young girl, taking the rap for Ford, and his death was no accident. Ford has a score to settle Conway just as soon as the right opportunity arises. And that opportunity is Joyce Lakeland. Only Joyce has reawakened his sickness – his brutal dark side. Their violent first encounter drives a wedge between Ford and fiancée and sets in train a spate of murders in Central City. Ford thinks he’s covered his tracks, but now his inner demon has re-emerged he finds himself slowly becoming the attention of suspicion.

The Killer Inside Me is a curious read in that it manages to maintain its suspense throughout despite the unfolding of the story holding few surprises. Ford is a sociopath in the sense that at one level he appears normal and he’s self-aware of his ‘sickness’, but he’s manipulative and deceitful, has shallow emotions, lacks empathy and remorse, and can flip into extreme violence. Thompson does a great job of exploring Ford’s complex personality as he uses all of his sociopathic traits to exercise his revenge and cover up his trail through deception and calculated violence. The writing is tight, all tell and no show, and plotting and characterization is excellent. Where it excels is in exploring Ford’s warped mind and world, without resorting to excessive description and back story, and yet being dotted with nuanced insight. I was slightly disappointed by the end, but it fitted with the rest of the narrative, and the plotting was a little forced at times. I was expecting the book to be uber-violent, but actually it’s reasonably run of the mill by today’s standards and is certainly not excessive. Overall, a great character driven read that’s very thought-provoking. I've another Thompson already lined up; looking forward to it.

Atkinson inverted

I've just finished Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. I haven't enough time to write a review for the forgotten Friday slot, so I'll just share one observation. Earlier in the week I reviewed Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, a story I felt was pretty verbose, with a lot of show at the expense of tell, and which could have lost a hundred pages and the story be unaffected. Thompson's writing is almost the complete opposite - all show and little tell and as tight as a drum. Here's how he sets the scene:

Our standards of conduct aren't the same, say, as they are in the east or middle-west. Out here you say yes ma'am and no ma'am to anything with skirts on; anything white, that is. Out here, if you catch a man with his pants down, you apologize ... even if you have to arrest him afterwards. Out here you're a man, a man and a gentleman, or you aren't anything. And God help you if you're not.

I don't know about you, but I have a pretty good idea about this place and its social norms. Five sentences then straight back into the dialogue and action. Great stuff.