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The Grifters
To his friends, to his coworkers, and even to his mistress Moira, Roy Dillon is an honest hardworking salesman. He lives in a cheap hotel just within his pay bracket. He goes to work every day. He has hundreds of friends and associates who could attest to his good character.
Yet, hidden behind three gaudy clown paintings in Roy's pallid hotel room, sits fifty-two thousand dollars--the money Roy makes from his short cons, his "grifting." For years, Roy has effortlessly maintained control over his house-of-cards life--until the simplest con goes wrong, and he finds himself critically injured and at the mercy of the most dangerous woman he ever met: his own mother.
THE GRIFTERS, one of the best novels ever written about the art of the con, is an ingeniously crafted story of deception and betrayal that was the basis for Stephen Frears' and Martin Scorsese's 1990 critically-acclaimed film of the same name.
Yet, hidden behind three gaudy clown paintings in Roy's pallid hotel room, sits fifty-two thousand dollars--the money Roy makes from his short cons, his "grifting." For years, Roy has effortlessly maintained control over his house-of-cards life--until the simplest con goes wrong, and he finds himself critically injured and at the mercy of the most dangerous woman he ever met: his own mother.
THE GRIFTERS, one of the best novels ever written about the art of the con, is an ingeniously crafted story of deception and betrayal that was the basis for Stephen Frears' and Martin Scorsese's 1990 critically-acclaimed film of the same name.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
About the author
Jim Thompson
163 books1,533 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
James Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction.
Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice, notably by Anthony Boucher in the New York Times, he was little-recognized in his lifetime. Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow, when in the late 1980s, several novels were re-published in the Black Lizard series of re-discovered crime fiction.
Thompson's writing culminated in a few of his best-regarded works: The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman and Pop. 1280. In these works, Thompson turned the derided pulp genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and surrealism.
The writer R.V. Cassills has suggested that of all pulp fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor even Horace McCoy, author of the bleak They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, ever "wrote a book within miles of Thompson". Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the forgoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."
Thompson admired Fyodor Dostoevsky and was nicknamed "Dimestore Dostoevsky" by writer Geoffrey O'Brien. Film director Stephen Frears, who directed an adaptation of Thompson's The Grifters as 1990's The Grifters, also identified elements of Greek tragedy in his themes.
James Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction.
Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice, notably by Anthony Boucher in the New York Times, he was little-recognized in his lifetime. Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow, when in the late 1980s, several novels were re-published in the Black Lizard series of re-discovered crime fiction.
Thompson's writing culminated in a few of his best-regarded works: The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman and Pop. 1280. In these works, Thompson turned the derided pulp genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and surrealism.
The writer R.V. Cassills has suggested that of all pulp fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor even Horace McCoy, author of the bleak They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, ever "wrote a book within miles of Thompson". Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the forgoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."
Thompson admired Fyodor Dostoevsky and was nicknamed "Dimestore Dostoevsky" by writer Geoffrey O'Brien. Film director Stephen Frears, who directed an adaptation of Thompson's The Grifters as 1990's The Grifters, also identified elements of Greek tragedy in his themes.
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March 15, 2012
For all you Petey Positives and Betty Bright sides out there peering around corners looking for humanity’s better angels, Jim Thompson is slinging a sledge hammer ready to shatter your shiny happy illusions. His message: people well and truly suck. Personally, I’m enough of a cynic regarding my fellow humans that Jimmy’s words don't choke me going down. They're like 18 year old scotch warming up my cockles.
In this “slice the vein of life” story, Jim introduces us to 3 peas in a seriously fuckoed pod. We have Roy Dillon, a 25 year old, smart, savvy, small time con artist with more mother issues than Norman Bates. Roy's a very successful short con operator who suffers a major set back at the beginning of story when “a mark” detects his scam and gives him what for in the stomach with a heavy club...HARD.
Next we have “Roy’s mother issue” herself, Lilly Dillon, who, at 39 years old (she had Roy at 14), has been grifting longer than Roy’s been breathing. Lilly works for a big time mobster named Bobo Justus, where she travels to horse races and places bets on “long shots” for the big gambling syndicates in order to bring the odds down.
Finally, we have Moira Langtry, Roy’s older girl-friend, who bears an eerie resemblance to Lilly and is quite a shitty little person in her own right. Moira used to work a two man “long con” for big money and is now searching for a new partner (Hmm…any guesses?). In the meantime, she gets by trading sex for rent, food, drinks and other assorted sundries.
Well, these 3 sharks in designer clothes all come together when Roy’s tummy trouble turns out to be rather serious and gets him hospitalized. Enter Carol Roberg: part-time nurse at the hospital and the one ray of bright light in this sordid American tale. Carol is kind, gentle, generous, pretty, very naive and harbors a painfully dark secret that I won’t spoil here (however I warn you that I audibly gasped when I found out).
Carol becomes a chunk of wood between the twin buzz saws of Lilly and Roy, with Moiry in the corner holding a jar of salt and some lemon juice for the clean up. However, compared to what the three do to themselves and each other, Carol ends up getting off comparatively light.
This story is bleak. It's subtle, yet savage and spends all its time showing us the lives of 3 people who, combined, have less heart than the Grinch before the “Whos” started caroling. What they do to one another is sometimes tough to watch, but when a good, normal person crosses their path, it's like a feeding frenzy.
HOWEVER, what's most amazing about Thompson’s story is that he has you constantly on the edge of “feeling something” for these characters, especially Roy, with whom we spend the most page time. Roy is scarred and damaged from upbringing with Lilly, but there are shreds of the good person still inside, the person who wants to lead a normal life and do the right thing. There were several times while reading this that my mind was screaming at the page for Roy to take one road rather than another...the guy killed me.
This is what Thompson is so good at, literary sadist that he is. He makes you “feel” for his characters. I won’t call it pity or even understanding, but more a hope that they are about to listen to the fading image of their conscience and do the right thing. Thompson has a real gift for showing you very dark, damaged people and getting you to see through their eyes. He doesn’t want you to agree with what they do and he isn’t looking to justify their actions, but he can make their inhuman cruelty seem very, very human.
Of course, this kind of writing rips me up inside and makes me want to slap him in the sack with a black jack because of it. He deserves it, believe me.
One last thing...the end is AMAZING and will absolutely floor you. You've been warned!!
Overall, this was dark and depressing, and I loved it. The only thing that keeps me from giving it 5 stars is that I'd previously seen the movie, with John Cusack, Angelica Huston and Annette Bening, about 5 times before reading this (I obviously loved it) and so the suspense was a bit watered down. Those that haven’t yet seen the movie, I would recommend reading the book first and then watching the film. You will love both.
4.5 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!
In this “slice the vein of life” story, Jim introduces us to 3 peas in a seriously fuckoed pod. We have Roy Dillon, a 25 year old, smart, savvy, small time con artist with more mother issues than Norman Bates. Roy's a very successful short con operator who suffers a major set back at the beginning of story when “a mark” detects his scam and gives him what for in the stomach with a heavy club...HARD.
Next we have “Roy’s mother issue” herself, Lilly Dillon, who, at 39 years old (she had Roy at 14), has been grifting longer than Roy’s been breathing. Lilly works for a big time mobster named Bobo Justus, where she travels to horse races and places bets on “long shots” for the big gambling syndicates in order to bring the odds down.
Finally, we have Moira Langtry, Roy’s older girl-friend, who bears an eerie resemblance to Lilly and is quite a shitty little person in her own right. Moira used to work a two man “long con” for big money and is now searching for a new partner (Hmm…any guesses?). In the meantime, she gets by trading sex for rent, food, drinks and other assorted sundries.
Well, these 3 sharks in designer clothes all come together when Roy’s tummy trouble turns out to be rather serious and gets him hospitalized. Enter Carol Roberg: part-time nurse at the hospital and the one ray of bright light in this sordid American tale. Carol is kind, gentle, generous, pretty, very naive and harbors a painfully dark secret that I won’t spoil here (however I warn you that I audibly gasped when I found out).
Carol becomes a chunk of wood between the twin buzz saws of Lilly and Roy, with Moiry in the corner holding a jar of salt and some lemon juice for the clean up. However, compared to what the three do to themselves and each other, Carol ends up getting off comparatively light.
This story is bleak. It's subtle, yet savage and spends all its time showing us the lives of 3 people who, combined, have less heart than the Grinch before the “Whos” started caroling. What they do to one another is sometimes tough to watch, but when a good, normal person crosses their path, it's like a feeding frenzy.
HOWEVER, what's most amazing about Thompson’s story is that he has you constantly on the edge of “feeling something” for these characters, especially Roy, with whom we spend the most page time. Roy is scarred and damaged from upbringing with Lilly, but there are shreds of the good person still inside, the person who wants to lead a normal life and do the right thing. There were several times while reading this that my mind was screaming at the page for Roy to take one road rather than another...the guy killed me.
This is what Thompson is so good at, literary sadist that he is. He makes you “feel” for his characters. I won’t call it pity or even understanding, but more a hope that they are about to listen to the fading image of their conscience and do the right thing. Thompson has a real gift for showing you very dark, damaged people and getting you to see through their eyes. He doesn’t want you to agree with what they do and he isn’t looking to justify their actions, but he can make their inhuman cruelty seem very, very human.
Of course, this kind of writing rips me up inside and makes me want to slap him in the sack with a black jack because of it. He deserves it, believe me.
One last thing...the end is AMAZING and will absolutely floor you. You've been warned!!
Overall, this was dark and depressing, and I loved it. The only thing that keeps me from giving it 5 stars is that I'd previously seen the movie, with John Cusack, Angelica Huston and Annette Bening, about 5 times before reading this (I obviously loved it) and so the suspense was a bit watered down. Those that haven’t yet seen the movie, I would recommend reading the book first and then watching the film. You will love both.
4.5 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!
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May 1, 2021
Millions of people know The Grifters from the 1990 blockbuster film starring John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Bening. The film is great, no doubt about it.
Jim Thompson's 1963 novel on which the film is based also rates five stars and deserves classic status for a number of reasons, a few of those reasons (please see below) not necessarily on display in the film.
The story revolves around Roy Dillon, Roy's mother Lilly and Roy's girlfriend Moira. All three are, in their own way, grifters, that is, con artists and thieves.
We're given the backstory right up front: Lilly is from a family of backwoods white trash. Lilly married a thirty-year-old railroad worker when she was thirteen and gave birth to Roy nine months later. Shortly after Roy's birth, Lilly's husband suffered an accident that left her a widow.
Lilly dumped Roy on her family but after a few year Lilly's father, with the help of a horsewhip, persuaded Lilly to take back her son and care for him. To avoid more whipping, Lilly scooped up Roy and fled to Baltimore where she put her classy hot looks and sharp mind to good use working the bar/nightclub circuit.
With a few deft strokes, Jim Thompson sketches the details of Lilly's relationship with Roy, for example: "her attitude was that of a selfish older sister to an annoying little brother." Author Jim also notes Roy was a well behaved, excellent student in school. Fast learning Roy quickly grasped all the ways exemplary behavior can pay off, particularly in terms of money and, after all, money makes the world go round.
Upon graduating high school, bye-bye, Lilly, and good riddance. Good-looking Roy, now age seventeen, strikes out on his own, makes a beeline for New York aka The Big Apple. Roy works door-to-door sales on commission but knows he can make more money, fast and easy, by the short con. He learns the craft from a master of the game, a guy called Mintz.
The Grifters picks up with Roy, age twenty-four, in Los Angeles, successful salesman and seasoned short con grifter. But then the unexpected: a whack in the gut. Oh, yes, at a suburban news shop, Roy pulls a con and is found out. The guy behind the counter comes out, takes a hefty windup with a wooden club and smacks Roy in the stomach. Ouch times ten!
Although in severe pain, thinking he might be dying, Roy finally makes it back to his apartment. He's resting on his couch when he receives a call from the front desk clerk. "A visitor, Mr. Dillon. A very attractive young lady. She says" - a tactful laugh - "She says she's your mother." Moments later Roy is seeing Lilly face-to-face for the first time in seven years.
Lilly immediately detects Roy is seriously injured and requires medical attention. Within the hour, an ambulance takes Roy to to the hospital. Turns out, Roy Dillon is still alive thanks to Lilly's intervention.
Thus we have the tale's framework. My words provide the merest bare-bones outline. The Grifters is phenomenal, the pieces fit together as if a magnificently crafted stainless steel timepiece - the folding in of backstory for each of the three grifters, the exactitude of atmosphere, of tone, of mood, the snappy, pitch perfect dialogue. Hell, if a hardboiled crime novel can reach perfection, The Grifters is that novel.
As I alluded to above, the book contains striking features not captured in the film. Here are three:
Lilly and Moira, Lookalikes
Lilly is thirty-eight and looks thirty-two, the same age as Moira. A director who wanted to make a present-day version of the film might even toy with the idea of using the same actress to play both parts. Or, the director might consider finding actresses that are twins or actresses who could almost pass as twins. Such casting would certainly underscore Moria is another Lilly, not to mention the powerful impact on an audience with all the Freudian overtones.
Lilly's Tragic Childhood
Lilly confronts Roy with her own abusive background: "It's all a matter of comparison, right? In the good neighborhoods you were raised in, and stacked up against the other mothers you saw there, I stank. But I didn't grow up in that kind of environment, Roy. Where I was raised a kid was lucky if he got three months of school in his life. Lucky if he didn't die of rickets or hookworm or plain old starvation, or something worse. I can't remember a day, from the time I was old enough to remember anything, that I had enough to eat and didn't get a beating..."
Jim Thompson knew the reality of poverty firsthand, both as a boy and a man. He rejected the contemporary American optimism of the affluent society brought on by capitalism and "free enterprise." He could see the oppressive side of capitalism, the ways poverty spawns dysfunction, turns family members against one another, propagates emotional and physical abuse.
Harrowing Revelation
Roy has a round of luscious sex with Carol, the nurse Lilly hired to tend to him while recovering. But then Roy asks Carol about the last time she had sex.
Carol reports: "It was there." She extended the tattooed arm. "There also I was made sterile." As if reading from a fairy tale, as if describing the trauma of someone else entirely, Carol goes on to relate her experience as a child of seven or eight in a Nazi concentration camp.
Reading this section of Grifters is both heart-wrenching and revealing. Jim Thompson switches narrative registers to convey the depth of Carol's tragedy. Yet Roy, forever the slick, smooth-talking grifter, proves incapable of relating or responding to Carol on a deeper, more dramatic level.
It can not be emphasized enough: the film The Grifters is super but don't miss out on reading Jim Thompson's absolutely first-rate novel.
American crime novelist Jim Thompson, 1906-1977
September 10, 2015
Salesman Roy Dillon has a secret life as a top shelf grifter. When he has the opportunity to go legit, how will the women in his life take it? Will his downfall be at the hands of his girlfriend Moira Langtry, or his mother, Lilly?
Here we are, another noir tale of self-destruction by Mr. Happy, Jim Thompson.
"Don't trust anyone ever" seems to be the moral of The Grifters. Not surprising since most of the main characters are shady croooks and grifters to some degree. Roy runs short cons. Moira Langtry pays her way through life with her body. Lilly Dillon is mixed up with some shady gamblers. Not one of them should be left unsupervised.
Roy's a little more sympathetic than most Jim Thompson leads. He's conflicted about his grifting lifestyle and just seems tired. Not only that, he's got serious mommy issues, nicely illustrated by the resemblance between his girlfriend and his mother.
The Grifters is a slow burn and the ending is pretty spectacular, cold, violent, and more than a little creepy. I've seen similar endings written since but I don't think any of them were as effective.
This is a top shelf Jim Thompson book, belonging on the same tier as The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280. Four out of five stars.
Here we are, another noir tale of self-destruction by Mr. Happy, Jim Thompson.
"Don't trust anyone ever" seems to be the moral of The Grifters. Not surprising since most of the main characters are shady croooks and grifters to some degree. Roy runs short cons. Moira Langtry pays her way through life with her body. Lilly Dillon is mixed up with some shady gamblers. Not one of them should be left unsupervised.
Roy's a little more sympathetic than most Jim Thompson leads. He's conflicted about his grifting lifestyle and just seems tired. Not only that, he's got serious mommy issues, nicely illustrated by the resemblance between his girlfriend and his mother.
The Grifters is a slow burn and the ending is pretty spectacular, cold, violent, and more than a little creepy. I've seen similar endings written since but I don't think any of them were as effective.
This is a top shelf Jim Thompson book, belonging on the same tier as The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280. Four out of five stars.
April 1, 2023
I'm not a big Jim Thompson fan. When it comes to American crime fiction, I prefer the novels of Charles Willeford and Charles Williams over the ones by Thompson. I am often irritated by Thompson's lack of attention to detail, over the top dialog and faux vicious and corrupt characters. I hated The Killer Inside Me and only enjoyed parts of The Getaway.
But The Grifters was quite impressive.
Roy Dillon is an undercover conman who is trying to escape from the incestuous clutches of his mother Lily Dillon while also trying to choose between his lover Moira Langtry (who looks a lot like his mother) and the innocent Jewish nurse Carol Roberg even as he recovers from an internal hemorrhage picked up during a minor con job.
Every character has a backstory that is narrated through flashback. Moira Langtry's flashback was excellent. So were the descriptions of Roy Dillon's methods.
The book suffers from some of the irritations that I mentioned at the start. But Thompson keeps it entertaining throughout and throws in a couple of glorious twists towards the end.
But The Grifters was quite impressive.
Roy Dillon is an undercover conman who is trying to escape from the incestuous clutches of his mother Lily Dillon while also trying to choose between his lover Moira Langtry (who looks a lot like his mother) and the innocent Jewish nurse Carol Roberg even as he recovers from an internal hemorrhage picked up during a minor con job.
Every character has a backstory that is narrated through flashback. Moira Langtry's flashback was excellent. So were the descriptions of Roy Dillon's methods.
The book suffers from some of the irritations that I mentioned at the start. But Thompson keeps it entertaining throughout and throws in a couple of glorious twists towards the end.
May 13, 2023
“A confidence trick is also known as a con game, a con, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko (or bunco), a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle or a bamboozle. The intended victims are known as "marks", "suckers", or "gulls" (i.e., gullible). When accomplices are employed, they are known as shills”—Wikipedia
To grift is to engage in petty swindling.
Until this week I had never read The Grifters (1963), but have seen several times the film with Jon Cusack, Annette Bening, and Anjelica Huston and loved it, a classic. I recently read one of Thompson’s other novels, The Killer Inside Me (1952), that I found deliciously vicious, but admittedly at times a little too brutal. The Grifters dials down the viciousness and focuses on (mostly) the emotional states of short con grifter Roy, his long con grifter mother Lily, and Roy’s girlfriend (who looks very much like Lily) Moira, but it is equally delicious, in its own way.
The Grifters, in spite of its pulpy themes, has a real literary foundation. Okay, he’s not Hemingway, but like many of the noir writers of the mid last century, he was influenced by him. I also see in Thompson elements Nelson Algren crafted in his Chicago novels. He was also influenced by his favorite author, Dostoevsky, who like Thompson chronicled the down and out gamblers and alcoholics, the lost souls. Thompson was nicknamed the "Dime-store Dostoevsky" by writer Geoffrey O'Brien, who also found elements of Greek tragedy in Thompson’s themes. As with Dostoevsky, Thompson can be very clever and very funny, and surely is both in The Grifters.
“Moira purred: ‘Gosh, Roy, I have no idea how I can ever thank you. . .’
‘Hmm,’ Roy said, ‘Maybe I can think of something. Maybe you can wash my socks or something. . .”
Okay, okay, maybe that's not that funny or clever, but hey, I smiled! But in general here Thompson calls on the darker side of Dostoevsky, focusing on the burned-out, fragile lives of Roy and Lily, who are just sick to death of the grift grindstone:
“There was too much of a sameness about the evening’s delights. He had been the same route too many times. He’d been there before, so double-damned often, and however you traveled—backward, forward, or walking on your hands—you always got to the same place. You got nowhere, in other words, and each trip took a little more out of you.”
And:
“He [Roy] picked her [Moira] up and tossed her on the bed.
They had a hell of a time.
“But afterward, after she had gone back to her own room, depression came to him and what had seemed like such a hell of a time became distasteful, even a little disgusting. It was the depression of surfeit, the tail of self-indulgence’s kite. You flew high, wide, and handsome, imposing on the breeze that might have wafted you along indefinitely; and then it was gone, and down, down, down you went.”
And once again:
“Strolling down a white-graveled walk to the cliff above the ocean, he let his eyes rove aimlessly over the expanse of sea and sand: The icy-looking whitecaps, the blinking, faraway sails of boats, the sweeping, constantly searching gulls. Desolation. Eternal, infinite. Like Dostoevsky’s conception of eternity, a fly circling about a privy, the few signs of life only emphasized the loneliness.”
Okay, that’s not maybe quite Dostoevesky-level writing, it’s maybe “dimestore” Dostoevsky, but I don’t want to get all snobby about it, either; it is one of the virtues of noir that it combines sort of maudlin, over-the-top realism and poetry. He’s not Emily Dickinson, obviously, but he doesn't want to be. Street poetry.
Back to O’Brien’s contention about Greek themes, Roy has Oedipal-level feelings for his mother, which works out in an interesting way I will not discuss, since it very much involves the wonderful twists and turns of the ending to this short book that made me literally shout out loud with joy: whoo, what an ending, terrific. And is the book better than the movie? Yep! At the very least, it adds a layer of existential angst the movie leaves out.
To grift is to engage in petty swindling.
Until this week I had never read The Grifters (1963), but have seen several times the film with Jon Cusack, Annette Bening, and Anjelica Huston and loved it, a classic. I recently read one of Thompson’s other novels, The Killer Inside Me (1952), that I found deliciously vicious, but admittedly at times a little too brutal. The Grifters dials down the viciousness and focuses on (mostly) the emotional states of short con grifter Roy, his long con grifter mother Lily, and Roy’s girlfriend (who looks very much like Lily) Moira, but it is equally delicious, in its own way.
The Grifters, in spite of its pulpy themes, has a real literary foundation. Okay, he’s not Hemingway, but like many of the noir writers of the mid last century, he was influenced by him. I also see in Thompson elements Nelson Algren crafted in his Chicago novels. He was also influenced by his favorite author, Dostoevsky, who like Thompson chronicled the down and out gamblers and alcoholics, the lost souls. Thompson was nicknamed the "Dime-store Dostoevsky" by writer Geoffrey O'Brien, who also found elements of Greek tragedy in Thompson’s themes. As with Dostoevsky, Thompson can be very clever and very funny, and surely is both in The Grifters.
“Moira purred: ‘Gosh, Roy, I have no idea how I can ever thank you. . .’
‘Hmm,’ Roy said, ‘Maybe I can think of something. Maybe you can wash my socks or something. . .”
Okay, okay, maybe that's not that funny or clever, but hey, I smiled! But in general here Thompson calls on the darker side of Dostoevsky, focusing on the burned-out, fragile lives of Roy and Lily, who are just sick to death of the grift grindstone:
“There was too much of a sameness about the evening’s delights. He had been the same route too many times. He’d been there before, so double-damned often, and however you traveled—backward, forward, or walking on your hands—you always got to the same place. You got nowhere, in other words, and each trip took a little more out of you.”
And:
“He [Roy] picked her [Moira] up and tossed her on the bed.
They had a hell of a time.
“But afterward, after she had gone back to her own room, depression came to him and what had seemed like such a hell of a time became distasteful, even a little disgusting. It was the depression of surfeit, the tail of self-indulgence’s kite. You flew high, wide, and handsome, imposing on the breeze that might have wafted you along indefinitely; and then it was gone, and down, down, down you went.”
And once again:
“Strolling down a white-graveled walk to the cliff above the ocean, he let his eyes rove aimlessly over the expanse of sea and sand: The icy-looking whitecaps, the blinking, faraway sails of boats, the sweeping, constantly searching gulls. Desolation. Eternal, infinite. Like Dostoevsky’s conception of eternity, a fly circling about a privy, the few signs of life only emphasized the loneliness.”
Okay, that’s not maybe quite Dostoevesky-level writing, it’s maybe “dimestore” Dostoevsky, but I don’t want to get all snobby about it, either; it is one of the virtues of noir that it combines sort of maudlin, over-the-top realism and poetry. He’s not Emily Dickinson, obviously, but he doesn't want to be. Street poetry.
Back to O’Brien’s contention about Greek themes, Roy has Oedipal-level feelings for his mother, which works out in an interesting way I will not discuss, since it very much involves the wonderful twists and turns of the ending to this short book that made me literally shout out loud with joy: whoo, what an ending, terrific. And is the book better than the movie? Yep! At the very least, it adds a layer of existential angst the movie leaves out.
November 16, 2022
"A fearful shadow lies constantly over the residents of Uneasy Street. It casts itself through the ostensibly friendly handshake, or the gorgeously wrapped package . . . Every neighbor is suspect, every outsider, everyone PERIOD - even one's own husband or wife or sweetheart. There is no ease on Uneasy Street. The longer one's tenancy, the more untenable it becomes." -- on pages 183-184
Celebrating its 60th birthday next year, is there really anything new that anyone say about author Thompson's noir / pulp fiction crime novel The Grifters? Centered on the unlikely trio of ailing twenty-six year-old con man Roy Dillon, his hard-bitten swindler mom Lilly (thirty-nine years old - yikes!), and the slinky dame Moira Langtry (whose age murkily falls somewhere in between said mother and son), these deceitful and sharp-witted characters perform an edgy dance around and with each other regarding a stashed $52,000. (FYI - since the story was both published and set in the balmy year of 1963, the present-day monetary equivalent would be just over a half-million dollars.) Interestingly, the narrative largely seems to simply follow the leads over the course of a few staid days in their respective lives in the City of Angels - although there are WAY more sinners than saints in this story - but then things really take a lively and shocking turn in the concluding three chapters. While I deduced one of the big plot twists just before it happened, author Thompson positively nailed the occasional threats of violence and the required downbeat ending.
Celebrating its 60th birthday next year, is there really anything new that anyone say about author Thompson's noir / pulp fiction crime novel The Grifters? Centered on the unlikely trio of ailing twenty-six year-old con man Roy Dillon, his hard-bitten swindler mom Lilly (thirty-nine years old - yikes!), and the slinky dame Moira Langtry (whose age murkily falls somewhere in between said mother and son), these deceitful and sharp-witted characters perform an edgy dance around and with each other regarding a stashed $52,000. (FYI - since the story was both published and set in the balmy year of 1963, the present-day monetary equivalent would be just over a half-million dollars.) Interestingly, the narrative largely seems to simply follow the leads over the course of a few staid days in their respective lives in the City of Angels - although there are WAY more sinners than saints in this story - but then things really take a lively and shocking turn in the concluding three chapters. While I deduced one of the big plot twists just before it happened, author Thompson positively nailed the occasional threats of violence and the required downbeat ending.
August 22, 2019
There was one thing about playing the angles. If you played them long enough, you knew the other guy's as well as you knew your own. Most of the time it was like you were looking out the same window.
Roy Dillon, grifter extraordinaire, was always playing the angles. Though Roy is undoubtedly our protagonist, this really is more of an ensemble piece. While The Killer Inside Me and Pop. 1280 are meditations on (if you can call such depraved tales “meditations”) the existence of one twisted mind amid a world filled with easy marks and clueless rubes, Roy is not a lone fox in a hen-house. His mother, Lilly, and paramour, Moira, are stars in acts of their own, giving rise to deliciously unpredictable interactions where you're never quite sure who is playing who(m).
This wasn't my first ticket to the Jim Thompson show, so while I was expecting a level of "darkness" that begs for a stronger word than simply noir , I was not expecting was the elegance of it all. It wasn't so much that the twists simply surprised me, or proved me right or wrong- they brought a level of near-existential reflection and depth that gave a sort of bonus gravitas to an already well-written, highly-recommended, riveting read about ever-precarious life on "Uneasy Street."
For a fearful shadow lies constantly over the residents of Uneasy Street. It casts itself through the ostensibly friendly handshake, or the gorgeously wrapped package. It beams out from the baby's carriage, the barber's chair, the beauty parlor. Every neighbor is suspect, every outsider, everyone period; even one's own husband or wife or sweetheart. There is no ease on Uneasy Street. The longer one's tenancy, the more untenable it becomes.
9/10 stars, but this one definitely deserved to be rounded up for Goodreads.
Bonus thoughts and/or comments:
I, for one, didn't know what a punchboard was, so I figured I'd share with the class.
Also, as severe blows to the abdomen play a role in the story, my thoughts quickly turned to Harry Houdini and thus (yes, obviously), Archer .
Cyril: I’m so sorry I slammed you in the gut. Jeez, that’s how Houdini died.
Pam: Houdini died of AIDS.
Cyril: No! Why do you always say that?
Archer: Medical fact, Cyril.If you get hit in the chest between heartbeats, you can die.Go ask Houdini!
Pam (chuckling): Ask him what, how to get AIDS?
July 3, 2022
OK, so I wish I'd read the novel first before seeing the movie - no doubt the ending was less shocking as you know it's coming, but nonetheless I was pretty much engulfed from start to finish by this gem of a noir novel, that had a great hard-boiled prose very much in the style of Raymond Chandler. However, while you could at times be mistaken that it is Chandler - had he put Philip Marlowe aside and wrote about the shadowy life of the grifter, Jim Thompson is way more poisonous and nihilistic when it comes to his characters. In fact, he has even been called the most nihilistic of American writers. Let's be honest - well, for me anyway - it's much more fascinating reading about bad characters that are immoral and cunning and pretty much damned to hell, rather than the good ones who can some times be just ever so dull. What looks like a path to the American dream - albeit a criminal one, only ends up being the stuff of nightmares. Roy Dillon's con jobs are certainly running through the blood of the novel, but at its heart - a venomous heart, lies his mother Lilly and the femme fatale girlfriend Moira. Mix them together and you don't a nice tequila sunrise but rather a molotov cocktail. A compelling plot that takes in Los Angeles, San Diego and Tucson, I can't really find fault in it when it comes to noir fiction. It doesn't drag itself out, nor try to be too clever. It's length is damn near perfect - no excess fat; just lean muscle. I'll most definitely be reading more Jim Thompson. What a start!
July 11, 2020
This is the story of a small time con man and the three women in his life. His young mother who has been absent most of his life is also a grifter, as is his sometimes girlfriend. These are not nice people. The “good girl” in the book is a nurse. This book is ice cold, just like the movie although the movie slightly softened the mother’s character at the end. Maybe they thought audiences couldn’t handle a mother who was that remorseless. I am going to work my way through the rest of Jim Thompson’s books.
August 29, 2024
The Grifters is a taut, expertly-written story set in the underbelly of southern California during the late 1950s or early '60s. At the heart of the story are three grifters, a short-con artist named Roy Dillon; his mother, Lilly, who works for a mob based in Baltimore, and Moria Langtry, a young woman living by her wits and her body, who dreams of playing the big con, perhaps with Roy Dillon as her accomplice.
Roy Dillon has a "straight" job, working as a salesman, while he moves around Los Angeles working a variety of short cons. He lives unpretentiously in a cheap hotel and, operating under the radar, has amassed some $52,000--a not inconsiderable sum of money in the early '60s. He plans to continue working in this fashion for another five years or so, when he should have enough money to retire and disappear.
Lilly Dillon is only fourteen years older than her son and was hardly a traditional mother. She essentially handed Roy off and disappeared from his life. Her job for the mob involves manipulating the odds at horse-racing tracks by placing bets that will adjust the odds in the mob's favor. Over the years, she has been skimming from the mob and has a small fortune secreted in a secret compartment in the trunk of her car.
Moria Langtry is a bit older than Roy and has had a taste of the good life. She suspects that Roy is not as honest and upstanding as he appears to be on the surface, and she hopes to tempt him into teaming up with her to make some big scores. In the meantime, she is basically living from hand to mouth, selling her jewelry and using her voluptous body to keep going from day to day.
As the novel opens, Roy Dillon gets caught pulling a game on a mark. The mark slams a bat into Roy's stomach, badly injuring him. At that fortuitous moment, Roy's mother, who is in L.A. for the racing season, steps back into her son's life just in the nick of time and gets him the medical help that he desperately needs.
From that point on, the three protagonists circle each other, each attempting to advance his or her own agendas. It's a facinating character study as well as a glimpse into a portion of the underworld of that era. Like virtually all books by Jim Thompson, it's a very dark novel that portrays a hellish vision of the world. But for those who love hard-boiled, noirish novels, this one is not to be missed. 4.5 stars only because it's not quite on a par with a couple of Thompson's even better efforts.
Roy Dillon has a "straight" job, working as a salesman, while he moves around Los Angeles working a variety of short cons. He lives unpretentiously in a cheap hotel and, operating under the radar, has amassed some $52,000--a not inconsiderable sum of money in the early '60s. He plans to continue working in this fashion for another five years or so, when he should have enough money to retire and disappear.
Lilly Dillon is only fourteen years older than her son and was hardly a traditional mother. She essentially handed Roy off and disappeared from his life. Her job for the mob involves manipulating the odds at horse-racing tracks by placing bets that will adjust the odds in the mob's favor. Over the years, she has been skimming from the mob and has a small fortune secreted in a secret compartment in the trunk of her car.
Moria Langtry is a bit older than Roy and has had a taste of the good life. She suspects that Roy is not as honest and upstanding as he appears to be on the surface, and she hopes to tempt him into teaming up with her to make some big scores. In the meantime, she is basically living from hand to mouth, selling her jewelry and using her voluptous body to keep going from day to day.
As the novel opens, Roy Dillon gets caught pulling a game on a mark. The mark slams a bat into Roy's stomach, badly injuring him. At that fortuitous moment, Roy's mother, who is in L.A. for the racing season, steps back into her son's life just in the nick of time and gets him the medical help that he desperately needs.
From that point on, the three protagonists circle each other, each attempting to advance his or her own agendas. It's a facinating character study as well as a glimpse into a portion of the underworld of that era. Like virtually all books by Jim Thompson, it's a very dark novel that portrays a hellish vision of the world. But for those who love hard-boiled, noirish novels, this one is not to be missed. 4.5 stars only because it's not quite on a par with a couple of Thompson's even better efforts.
November 11, 2016
Ok guys, here goes. I started to read The Grifters and got about 70 pages in until I began to wonder whether or not I was reading the right book. Like maybe it was a novelization of the movie (which I haven't seen)? Because not only did I love the two other Jim Thompson books I've read previously, but so many people are fans of this particular book and it couldn't possibly be the one I was reading, right? I was expecting an entertaining con man thriller at worst, or another masterpiece of noir at best. But what I was reading was a bland soap opera about a love triangle between a short-con artist, his mother and his girlfriend. Maybe if I knew that's what it was from the start, I would've enjoyed it... It just kept going back and forth about Roy's mommy issues, and his conflicting desires to leave grifting behind. I even looked up the Wikipedia synopsis to make sure that I wasn't missing anything.
I wasn't. I was pretty uninterested, but I thought: Okay, this is building a set-up and then Thompson is gonna start putting it into overdrive in the 2nd half. Then the 2nd half of the book came and went. And it was more of the same, even up to the ending that people supposedly love. A big redeeming factor though is that Thompson's narrative voice is so enjoyable to read. That kept me going. But ultimately, I was disappointed that this one wasn't for me, and I'm most definitely in the very small minority. I thought the characters were easily forgettable and story itself pretty uneventful.
I wasn't. I was pretty uninterested, but I thought: Okay, this is building a set-up and then Thompson is gonna start putting it into overdrive in the 2nd half. Then the 2nd half of the book came and went. And it was more of the same, even up to the ending that people supposedly love. A big redeeming factor though is that Thompson's narrative voice is so enjoyable to read. That kept me going. But ultimately, I was disappointed that this one wasn't for me, and I'm most definitely in the very small minority. I thought the characters were easily forgettable and story itself pretty uneventful.
November 27, 2017
Υπάρχει μια σημαντική διαφορά μεταξύ του J. Thompson και των εκ Σκανδιναβίας ορμώμενων ομοτέχνων του. Ο μεν πρώτος είναι κατά κύριο λόγο Συγγραφέας, οι δε λοιποί είναι trendy γραφιάδες πολυσέλιδων τόμων μυστηρίου/θρίλερ και δευτερευόντως συγγραφείς – όπου Συγγραφέας, υπενθυμίζω, είναι ο τεχνίτης του λόγου, με διακριτό ύφος και όραμα.
Το "Οι κλέφτες" εμπεριέχει όλα εκείνα τα στοιχεία που καθιστούν τον Thompson σημαντικό στυλίστα, μια ξεχωριστή φωνή των αμερικανικών γραμμάτων. Δεν νομίζω πως είναι το καλύτερό του (προσωπική προτίμηση το απόλυτα σκοτεινό "The Getaway"), αλλά είναι σαφώς απολαυστικό και "μυρίζει" έντονα λογοτεχνία.
Τελικά, η υπόθεση Noir/ μυστήριο/ αστυνομικό ξεκίνησε και παραμένει αποκλειστικά προνόμιο των πέρα του Ατλαντικού συγγραφέων.
Το "Οι κλέφτες" εμπεριέχει όλα εκείνα τα στοιχεία που καθιστούν τον Thompson σημαντικό στυλίστα, μια ξεχωριστή φωνή των αμερικανικών γραμμάτων. Δεν νομίζω πως είναι το καλύτερό του (προσωπική προτίμηση το απόλυτα σκοτεινό "The Getaway"), αλλά είναι σαφώς απολαυστικό και "μυρίζει" έντονα λογοτεχνία.
Τελικά, η υπόθεση Noir/ μυστήριο/ αστυνομικό ξεκίνησε και παραμένει αποκλειστικά προνόμιο των πέρα του Ατλαντικού συγγραφέων.
August 31, 2009
If people have read or even heard of this book, it's probably because of the movie -- which is a shame. I only bought this book because a movie tie-in was on sale for five bucks at a local Half Price and there was an evil character named Moira, which amused me, and it would take a far stronger character than mine to withstand those twin temptations. (I have not seen the movie, mainly because an evil John Cusack would throw my hard-wired Say Anything/Grosse Pointe Blank fangirl brane into disarray.) I'm supposed to be watching the pawns get marched out in the opening words of A.S. Byatt's The Game, but I read a few pages from the middle of this book, got hooked on the short, evocative, deceptively simple sentences, read a few sections more and flipped back to the beginning to start properly (yeah, I frequently read mysteries starting with the end, so I know whodunnit. Sometimes if I try reading mysteries from the beginning without knowing the end I can't properly focus on the story. It's a sickness, I know).
Unfortunately it will be impossible to say anything about the spring-loaded plot, which keeps snapping shut on your fingers as you turn pages, without utterly spoiling it, so I won't. I will just say this: I have read a lot of gritty noir stories with trick climaxes and twist endings. This one works, because it's not just a showoff gotcha on the reader (no, I'm not STILL BITTER about Roger Ackroyd, thanks for asking). Surprises and deceptions are woven into the narrative like they're shot through the lives of the characters trapped in it. It all fits together with such bleak neatness it feels fated.
Other people have called this book grim, depressing, nihilistic -- and sure, it is all these things -- but there's also a clean brutality about it that's almost exhilarating, like seeing the excellence displayed at the races that feature in one of the book's subplots. No, nobody really escapes and there's no happy ending (that can't really be a spoiler) but when someone sets down so much truth so well in such a short space all I can do is catch my breath and say: Wow.
I love inside details about cons, but this book, despite some good descriptions of the lives of petty thieves and grifters, isn't really about that -- it's one more attempt at a portrait of Los Angeles, and pointedly at the end a character walks 'out of the room and the hotel, and out into the City of Angels.' The (anti)hero picks Los Angeles as a safe place to practice in after he spends too long in too small a section of New York out of ignorance, and the anonymous, fragmented, fractured, alienated and alienating life he shares with millions of others is the real point; Thompson details these atomistic existences carefully, without political or socioeconomic reproaches, just as damning and neutral as a Walker Evans Depression-era photo.
You can see how someone could read it and might want to make a non-chronologically-straightforward movie like Memento out of it -- frequently a scene starts in media res, then there's a little flashback to an even earlier scene, and on top of that the scene we originally start with begins right after something big exploded and small remnants of dialogue from that event, in italics, punctuate the narrative -- like little bits of reported shrapnel. There are small neat precise little prose poems about the paranoia of small-time crooks, how to set up dice games, and so on -- but the story doesn't depend on technical accounts of the tricks, altho we get brief vivid details of the 'tat,' the 'twenty' and a few other schemes. The cons themselves work because of the nature of modern city life -- people are so alienated that they take the manufactured, counterfeit moments of intimacy that con games need to work ('con' isn't shortened from 'confidence' for nothing) as the real deal, which is what lets the grifters make the marks. The table the games run on isn't the scarred wood of a bar or a smooth green field of poker felt but, as always, the human heart. Emotions are what makes con games possible; a classic example of this is David Mamet's intricate House of Games, where being let in on the con is itself a form of the con. Several characters in this novel fantasize about setting up 'long' cons, as opposed to 'short' cons like tricking a harassed cashier out of change for a twenty, but the truth is in life no long con is possible at all. Cons depend on burning up human relationships, trust, ignorance, innocence, the very idea that the person smiling at you isn't sizing up your every tell, like jet engines eat rocket fuel.
But there's another side to this that goes back far before David Mamet or counting cards, to Falstaff's mock-tragic cry when Prince Hal and Poins scheme within a scheme to set him up: a plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another! The novel's events inform us that just as cons can't stop conning even other cons, their actions make themselves marks in a way other people can't even imagine. In a neat little sequence, one man sees a punchboard in a bar and is taken aback, since they are one of the lowest, cheapest kinds of con: the person running the board punches out all the top prize slots, so noone ever has a chance to win. But this bartender has been a sucker, leaving his board clean, so the con starts running a game on him, rationalizing it's for the man's own good -- to tell him about the con itself would mean giving away 'knowledge no honest person should have,' and he thinks he'll instead refuse his winnings, saying the board must be defective, and get the bartender to toss it without realizing he's been duped. But just then, an undercover cop busts the bartender for not having a federal gambling tax-stamp, and the con man for running 'bunco.' The person who imagines they're running the game is, of course, the biggest sucker of all.
Unfortunately it will be impossible to say anything about the spring-loaded plot, which keeps snapping shut on your fingers as you turn pages, without utterly spoiling it, so I won't. I will just say this: I have read a lot of gritty noir stories with trick climaxes and twist endings. This one works, because it's not just a showoff gotcha on the reader (no, I'm not STILL BITTER about Roger Ackroyd, thanks for asking). Surprises and deceptions are woven into the narrative like they're shot through the lives of the characters trapped in it. It all fits together with such bleak neatness it feels fated.
Other people have called this book grim, depressing, nihilistic -- and sure, it is all these things -- but there's also a clean brutality about it that's almost exhilarating, like seeing the excellence displayed at the races that feature in one of the book's subplots. No, nobody really escapes and there's no happy ending (that can't really be a spoiler) but when someone sets down so much truth so well in such a short space all I can do is catch my breath and say: Wow.
I love inside details about cons, but this book, despite some good descriptions of the lives of petty thieves and grifters, isn't really about that -- it's one more attempt at a portrait of Los Angeles, and pointedly at the end a character walks 'out of the room and the hotel, and out into the City of Angels.' The (anti)hero picks Los Angeles as a safe place to practice in after he spends too long in too small a section of New York out of ignorance, and the anonymous, fragmented, fractured, alienated and alienating life he shares with millions of others is the real point; Thompson details these atomistic existences carefully, without political or socioeconomic reproaches, just as damning and neutral as a Walker Evans Depression-era photo.
You can see how someone could read it and might want to make a non-chronologically-straightforward movie like Memento out of it -- frequently a scene starts in media res, then there's a little flashback to an even earlier scene, and on top of that the scene we originally start with begins right after something big exploded and small remnants of dialogue from that event, in italics, punctuate the narrative -- like little bits of reported shrapnel. There are small neat precise little prose poems about the paranoia of small-time crooks, how to set up dice games, and so on -- but the story doesn't depend on technical accounts of the tricks, altho we get brief vivid details of the 'tat,' the 'twenty' and a few other schemes. The cons themselves work because of the nature of modern city life -- people are so alienated that they take the manufactured, counterfeit moments of intimacy that con games need to work ('con' isn't shortened from 'confidence' for nothing) as the real deal, which is what lets the grifters make the marks. The table the games run on isn't the scarred wood of a bar or a smooth green field of poker felt but, as always, the human heart. Emotions are what makes con games possible; a classic example of this is David Mamet's intricate House of Games, where being let in on the con is itself a form of the con. Several characters in this novel fantasize about setting up 'long' cons, as opposed to 'short' cons like tricking a harassed cashier out of change for a twenty, but the truth is in life no long con is possible at all. Cons depend on burning up human relationships, trust, ignorance, innocence, the very idea that the person smiling at you isn't sizing up your every tell, like jet engines eat rocket fuel.
But there's another side to this that goes back far before David Mamet or counting cards, to Falstaff's mock-tragic cry when Prince Hal and Poins scheme within a scheme to set him up: a plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another! The novel's events inform us that just as cons can't stop conning even other cons, their actions make themselves marks in a way other people can't even imagine. In a neat little sequence, one man sees a punchboard in a bar and is taken aback, since they are one of the lowest, cheapest kinds of con: the person running the board punches out all the top prize slots, so noone ever has a chance to win. But this bartender has been a sucker, leaving his board clean, so the con starts running a game on him, rationalizing it's for the man's own good -- to tell him about the con itself would mean giving away 'knowledge no honest person should have,' and he thinks he'll instead refuse his winnings, saying the board must be defective, and get the bartender to toss it without realizing he's been duped. But just then, an undercover cop busts the bartender for not having a federal gambling tax-stamp, and the con man for running 'bunco.' The person who imagines they're running the game is, of course, the biggest sucker of all.
April 24, 2015
I admit I watched the movie version of this book starring John Cusak a long time ago, well before I ever picked up the book, making me perhaps one of the last people on the planet to have read it. But, I found a copy in a used book store one day and couldn't resist it.
It sat on my shelf for a good long while, but I eventually got it read. This is not a very long book, and once I started it I could not put it down!
This a true noir classic, with more twist and turns than you can imagine. This story is very dark and some scenes made me squirm in my seat because they made me very uncomfortable. These were some really messed up people! 4.5 rounded to 5
It sat on my shelf for a good long while, but I eventually got it read. This is not a very long book, and once I started it I could not put it down!
This a true noir classic, with more twist and turns than you can imagine. This story is very dark and some scenes made me squirm in my seat because they made me very uncomfortable. These were some really messed up people! 4.5 rounded to 5
July 23, 2023
Read this recently but saw the film many many years ago. If you want good -- no -- great Noir, this is the story for you. I don't even want to touch on the story because I know I'll give something away and besides the title pretty much speaks for itself.
It is about a group of grifters with strong ties to each other. I want to say something so bad right now that would give the whole plot away!
When I first saw the film, years ago, I was speechless. Did not expect the book to be as good, heck at that time I didn't even know there WAS a book.
There is much wickedness abounding (as well as a lot of twisted happenings.) It's not just your standard story about grifters. You see how their relationships work with each other, who controls who, the games they play not just with their victims but with each other, resulting in a morbid, bizarre, at times grotesque, insanely addicting, captivatingly real story, with pain, sadness and mind-bendingly savage and cunning games. Shows the dark side of the human condition with flawlessness. I can't say enough good things about The Grifters.
It is about a group of grifters with strong ties to each other. I want to say something so bad right now that would give the whole plot away!
When I first saw the film, years ago, I was speechless. Did not expect the book to be as good, heck at that time I didn't even know there WAS a book.
There is much wickedness abounding (as well as a lot of twisted happenings.) It's not just your standard story about grifters. You see how their relationships work with each other, who controls who, the games they play not just with their victims but with each other, resulting in a morbid, bizarre, at times grotesque, insanely addicting, captivatingly real story, with pain, sadness and mind-bendingly savage and cunning games. Shows the dark side of the human condition with flawlessness. I can't say enough good things about The Grifters.
January 5, 2012
Noir? There's got to be something darker than that to describe Thompson's books. Something that doesn't just imply the absence of colour or light but the impossibility of their ever having existed in the first place. I liked this one a lot, even better than The Getaway though perhaps not as much as The Killer Inside Me.
Roy Dillon, like most of Thompson's protagonists, is young, charming and crooked. The son of a similarly charming and crooked con woman, he's been living in Los Angeles and working a shrewd set of short-term con jobs alongside the facade of a respectable life. But one day, he picks the wrong patsy and receives a blow to the stomach that causes internal bleeding.
Vulnerable, he soon finds himself in a deadly love quadrilateral involving his seductive, self-serving mother Lilly, his equally alluring lover Myra, who has a few secrets he doesn't know yet and the innocent but scarred nurse, Carol.
He's put through the wringer in this novel and he thinks he's decided to go straight by the time it's all over. But things never quite work that way in a Thompson novel and the brutality of the final two twists in the tale left me astonished and a little breathless. I would love to imagine that Thompson was writing about some other species on some other planet; perhaps the most terrifying thing about his novels is that they are fiction with the stamp of truth.
Roy Dillon, like most of Thompson's protagonists, is young, charming and crooked. The son of a similarly charming and crooked con woman, he's been living in Los Angeles and working a shrewd set of short-term con jobs alongside the facade of a respectable life. But one day, he picks the wrong patsy and receives a blow to the stomach that causes internal bleeding.
Vulnerable, he soon finds himself in a deadly love quadrilateral involving his seductive, self-serving mother Lilly, his equally alluring lover Myra, who has a few secrets he doesn't know yet and the innocent but scarred nurse, Carol.
He's put through the wringer in this novel and he thinks he's decided to go straight by the time it's all over. But things never quite work that way in a Thompson novel and the brutality of the final two twists in the tale left me astonished and a little breathless. I would love to imagine that Thompson was writing about some other species on some other planet; perhaps the most terrifying thing about his novels is that they are fiction with the stamp of truth.
February 1, 2024
04/2020
From 1963
One of Thompson's more intelligible novels. Ends with a striking conclusion. Dark and tangled plot, but interesting and satisfying.
I have read this many times, because I first read it when I was 14 and the movie came out. It was the same orange striped Black Lizard paperback I read in 1990. I mean I have only see that copy.
From 1963
One of Thompson's more intelligible novels. Ends with a striking conclusion. Dark and tangled plot, but interesting and satisfying.
I have read this many times, because I first read it when I was 14 and the movie came out. It was the same orange striped Black Lizard paperback I read in 1990. I mean I have only see that copy.
June 24, 2012
As a grifter, Roy learnt from the best with his mother who was a master of the long con. For Roy, the short con has been prosperous, however its not without perils as we're shown quite early on in the story. It's this incident which brings back his mother, Lilly, and kicks off a chain of events which culminates in an ending nothing short of spectacular.
In order to reinstate his deteriorating health, Lilly commissions home nurse Carol which serves as a means to demonstrate Roy's mothers need to influence him. As a character, she doesnt add all that much to the story, serving well as a Lilly's pawn rather than a point of focus in her own right. If anything, Carol highlights Roy's easy way with women and provides a nice correlation to the easy come easy go ways of his profession - Lilly, Carol, and girlfriend Moria are all important elements within Roy's games.
The hint of forbidden attraction, the mere suggestion of the unthinkable, the reflection of desire in slippery sweet embrace of Moira, adds a complexity to Roy Dillon which isn't fully realised until the closing chapters. While bubbling under the surface, the tension and off-centre relationship between Roy and his young mother Lilly is paramount to proceedings, creating a story within a story, of which Moira is a key piece.
'The Grifters' was a slow burn concluding with a blistering ending not to be missed. For a while I wasnt sure what all the hype surrounding Jim Thompson was about until the last 20 or so pages. Thompson weaved a web laden with influential and demanding characters supported by a plot of true grit and grift. If only the entire novel was as entertaining as the ending, this would've been hard to top. 4 stars.
In order to reinstate his deteriorating health, Lilly commissions home nurse Carol which serves as a means to demonstrate Roy's mothers need to influence him. As a character, she doesnt add all that much to the story, serving well as a Lilly's pawn rather than a point of focus in her own right. If anything, Carol highlights Roy's easy way with women and provides a nice correlation to the easy come easy go ways of his profession - Lilly, Carol, and girlfriend Moria are all important elements within Roy's games.
The hint of forbidden attraction, the mere suggestion of the unthinkable, the reflection of desire in slippery sweet embrace of Moira, adds a complexity to Roy Dillon which isn't fully realised until the closing chapters. While bubbling under the surface, the tension and off-centre relationship between Roy and his young mother Lilly is paramount to proceedings, creating a story within a story, of which Moira is a key piece.
'The Grifters' was a slow burn concluding with a blistering ending not to be missed. For a while I wasnt sure what all the hype surrounding Jim Thompson was about until the last 20 or so pages. Thompson weaved a web laden with influential and demanding characters supported by a plot of true grit and grift. If only the entire novel was as entertaining as the ending, this would've been hard to top. 4 stars.
August 21, 2017
Crazy people, that I hope I never run into in real life. If I do, I am turning the other way and running! This author's works are kind of addictive. Already looking forward to the next one.
April 4, 2020
"Why shouldn't he take a job that he wanted to take? Why shouldn't a man want a friend, a real friend, when he has never before had one?"
The language in this novel is a pleasure. The descriptions, the dialogue. There must be something about the surname Thompson. This fella had a real way with words, as did Hunter.
They called Thompson, Jim that is, "the dimestore Dostoevsky" in his day, or so I hear, and in my book that's very high praise. On the strength of this novel, though, I'd have to say that he earned it. Things seem to be under control at all times, and yet there's a real wildness to the story as well. It moves with a deceptive inevitability. There are haunting images (a burn mark on the back of a hand, hands around the neck of a sleeper in a dark hotel room). And then there's the hint of something on the periphery of the story that's truly perverse, that the main character isn't quite able to become conscious of, which makes it seem even more dreadful. Let's just say that I thought of Jim Morrison's greatest lyrical transgression.
In his essay on Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr gave his impression of Thompson: "Jim Thompson, the toughest pulp novelist of them all, had made [Stanley] nervous when they were working together on The Killing, a big guy in a dirty old raincoat, a terrific writer but a little too hard-boiled for Stanley’s taste. He’d turn up for work carrying a bottle in a brown paper bag, but saying nothing about it—it was just there on the desk with no apology or comment—not at all interested in putting Stanley at ease except to offer him the bag, which Stanley declined, and making no gestures whatever to any part of the Hollywood process, except maybe toward the money."
August 13, 2023
After reading that wonderful book That Quail, Robert I don't quite understand why The Grifters by Jim Thompson was so tempting to read. The Grifters is the exact opposite of that classic book but in it's own unique way is another 5 star book.
If you've never read a book by Thompson this would be a good place to start.
Master of the short con, Roy Dillon, is handsome, charming and very intelligent, so why would he choose to be a two bit grifter?
Jim Thompson explores the psychology behind his losers and soon the reader begins to understand what makes Roy tick.
I even began to root for Roy as he explores thoughts of going straight especially as his difficult childhood is explored.
There are a lot of things going on in Roy's life that will make turning over a new leaf very difficult though. Will Roy be able to succeed?
I suggest starting early in the evening when you read this book because you will not be able to go to sleep until you read the last page.
If you've never read a book by Thompson this would be a good place to start.
Master of the short con, Roy Dillon, is handsome, charming and very intelligent, so why would he choose to be a two bit grifter?
Jim Thompson explores the psychology behind his losers and soon the reader begins to understand what makes Roy tick.
I even began to root for Roy as he explores thoughts of going straight especially as his difficult childhood is explored.
There are a lot of things going on in Roy's life that will make turning over a new leaf very difficult though. Will Roy be able to succeed?
I suggest starting early in the evening when you read this book because you will not be able to go to sleep until you read the last page.
October 25, 2016
"The grift's like everything else. You don't stand still. You either go up or go down, usually down."
The Grifters is a tidy hard-boiled book, dark and twisty and full of existential questions. Roy Dillon is the grifter son of a grifting woman, and the question is whether he's beyond redemption. Can he go straight? Can he fall in love and join the world? Jim Thompson is the darkest of the hard-boiled writers, so you know the odds are against him. But Thompson's also a master writer, so he sets it up cleanly and maybe there's hope.
There's a subplot with a nurse named Carol who's Jewish, and I'm not sure where her sad history fits in. It felt like a tangent, and distracting. That bit had me wavering between three and four stars - that and the fact that I'm starting to have a sneaking feeling like, how many hard-boiled books does one need to read? They start to run together a little, with their bleak sensibilities and twisty plots. I've been assuming that I love noir, but I haven't really examined that; maybe I just like it.
What sets Thompson apart - and he's one of the top five, no doubt - is, again, that he's willing to go darker. There's a torture scene in here that's very nasty; it goes beyond what other noir writers are willing to put on the page for you. I'm not saying that's a pro or con, just a difference. Dillon's relationship with his rough customer of a mom is nuts too: The other book I've read by Thompson is The Killer Inside Me, and I liked that better. But this is solid stuff; if you like noir / hard-boiled books, you'll like this.
The Grifters is a tidy hard-boiled book, dark and twisty and full of existential questions. Roy Dillon is the grifter son of a grifting woman, and the question is whether he's beyond redemption. Can he go straight? Can he fall in love and join the world? Jim Thompson is the darkest of the hard-boiled writers, so you know the odds are against him. But Thompson's also a master writer, so he sets it up cleanly and maybe there's hope.
There's a subplot with a nurse named Carol who's Jewish, and I'm not sure where her sad history fits in. It felt like a tangent, and distracting. That bit had me wavering between three and four stars - that and the fact that I'm starting to have a sneaking feeling like, how many hard-boiled books does one need to read? They start to run together a little, with their bleak sensibilities and twisty plots. I've been assuming that I love noir, but I haven't really examined that; maybe I just like it.
What sets Thompson apart - and he's one of the top five, no doubt - is, again, that he's willing to go darker. There's a torture scene in here that's very nasty; it goes beyond what other noir writers are willing to put on the page for you. I'm not saying that's a pro or con, just a difference. Dillon's relationship with his rough customer of a mom is nuts too: The other book I've read by Thompson is The Killer Inside Me, and I liked that better. But this is solid stuff; if you like noir / hard-boiled books, you'll like this.
June 3, 2012
The characters are laced with just enough humanity for you to feel really bad for humanity. The writing was perfectly tuned. The plot was sharp. The characters are all twisted, warped and beautiful. I haven't wanted a shower so bad since I watched a movie by David Lynch. Hell is Los Angeles at night. The ONLY thing that would make this book better is if Gustave Doré or William Blake could have done the illustrations.
June 4, 2012
I find myself quite surprised at having never before read a Jim Thompson novel, I've known who he was and I've seen a lot of the movies based on his work, I've even owned a handful of his books for at least a year but still it took the pulp fiction group choosing it as the June read for me to actually pick one up.
Thompson has this reputation for being beyond dark, holding up a circus mirror to life that only reflects the ugly, uncomfortable and depressing and that is why I've found myself reading my first Jim Thompson at 29 but my first Chandler at 17.
The Grifters is an incredible book; immensely readable I struggled to stop myself from finishing it in one sitting, the three major players are fascinating in their own ways, backstories hinted at and fleshed out in equal measure and not a single redeeming feature in any of them. This being said they are still a joy to ride along with, you find yourself revelling in their meanness and amazed at what they are willing to do for a couple of bucks.
The analysis of self destructive behaviour is done in such a way that pushes this novel from mere hard boiled pulp goodness in to serious literary territory without the obvious signs that mark so many try hard novelists as hacks. Thompson is the read deal, this much I can see after just one novel.
I found myself amazed that it was written nearly 50 years ago as aside from a few minor details (mention of fleeing Nazi Germany and the obvious difference in monetary value thanks to inflation) this has a timeless feel and could easily be read as a modern day novel (as in fact Stephen Frears did with the movie.)
Maybe I won't wait so long before reading my next Jim Thompson.
Thompson has this reputation for being beyond dark, holding up a circus mirror to life that only reflects the ugly, uncomfortable and depressing and that is why I've found myself reading my first Jim Thompson at 29 but my first Chandler at 17.
The Grifters is an incredible book; immensely readable I struggled to stop myself from finishing it in one sitting, the three major players are fascinating in their own ways, backstories hinted at and fleshed out in equal measure and not a single redeeming feature in any of them. This being said they are still a joy to ride along with, you find yourself revelling in their meanness and amazed at what they are willing to do for a couple of bucks.
The analysis of self destructive behaviour is done in such a way that pushes this novel from mere hard boiled pulp goodness in to serious literary territory without the obvious signs that mark so many try hard novelists as hacks. Thompson is the read deal, this much I can see after just one novel.
I found myself amazed that it was written nearly 50 years ago as aside from a few minor details (mention of fleeing Nazi Germany and the obvious difference in monetary value thanks to inflation) this has a timeless feel and could easily be read as a modern day novel (as in fact Stephen Frears did with the movie.)
Maybe I won't wait so long before reading my next Jim Thompson.
July 24, 2018
Μπορεί να αδικώ το βιβλιαράκι με τα 2 αστεράκια (σκεφτόμουν επί ώρα αν του βάλω 2 ή 3) αλλά αυτό είναι στην τελική : βιβλιαράκι. Έχει μια ωραία νουάρ ατμόσφαιρα, ο Οιδίποδας κάπου αχνοφαινεται στο βάθος, αλλά στην πραγματικότητα για βιβλίο που ευαγγελίζεται τις νουάρ απάτες δεν συμβαίνουν και πολλά παρά στο πολύ τέλος. Ακόμη δεν κατάλαβα τις κατά μόνας απάτες της τριάδας και αυτό έχει σημασία διαολε όταν μου πλασάρεις κον αρτιστ ντραμα. Το φινάλε ? Το θυμόμουν άχνα από την ομώνυμη ταινία του 1990 και πεθαίνω για ένα καλό πλοτ τουίστ, αλλά στην πραγματική ζωή, you can' t get away with murder αλλάζοντας ταγιέρ. Καλογραμμενο και νουάρ και τζαζ και τα συναφη αλλά style over matter ? Χμμμ δεν ξέρω...
Edit : τελικά του δίνω το 3αστερο. Ας πάει το παλιάμπελο. Μόνο και μόνο γιατί έκανε τον Οιδίποδα νουάρ (Αφού δεν τον καταδεχονται οι ντόπιοι σε καμιά έξυπνη διασκευή). Και για το μαύρο τέλος. 3 αστεράκια. Στο τσακ.
Edit : τελικά του δίνω το 3αστερο. Ας πάει το παλιάμπελο. Μόνο και μόνο γιατί έκανε τον Οιδίποδα νουάρ (Αφού δεν τον καταδεχονται οι ντόπιοι σε καμιά έξυπνη διασκευή). Και για το μαύρο τέλος. 3 αστεράκια. Στο τσακ.
February 14, 2024
In “The Grifters,” Thompson offers a tight story that isn’t filled with unnecessary excesses. It is a story about the angles and “There was one thing about playing the angles. If you played them long enough, you knew the other guy’s as well as you knew your own.” It sets three life-long grifters in a tight triangle facing off against each other, last survivor wins. Along the way in with all the card games, that dice, the punchboards, the twenties, the horse races, and more, Thompson throws in Carol Roberg, who survived Dachau sterilized by what they did to her at age eight and an Oedipal complex with Lilly Dillon offering herself to now-grown up Roy Dillon, anything cause she just had to have that cash.
There are three players in this game and none of the other clowns in this story matter one iota. They are just filler, stand-ins, extras as it were. First, there is Lilly Dillon, from a family of backwoods white trash who married at thirteen and widowed at fourteen, dumping little Roy off with her family until her father showed up with Roy under one arm and a horse whip in the other. Sticking Roy in boarding school, Lilly became increasingly useful as an employee until eventually she became someone who would make layoff bets on longshots around the country, protecting the syndicate’s money.
She wanted to be something other than mom, to Roy, and he resented her until he turned seventeen when he left. Indeed, as he got into his teens, she softened her voice when she spoke to him and there was a suppressed hunger in her eyes. Roy eventually worked the short con across the country, settling in Los Angeles, where he could use his cover as a traveling salesman while he worked the fools he found everywhere.
Roy’s one distraction was Moira Langtry, with her own background in grifting. She could match him phrase for phrase as they sparred. Strangely, though, she resembled none other than his mother in stature and type. ”You couldn’t say that they actually looked like each other; they were both brunettes about the same size, but there was absolutely no facial resemblance. It was more a type similarity than a personal one. They were both members of the same flock; women who knew just what it took to preserve and enhance their natural attractiveness. Women who were either endowed with what it took, or spared no effort in getting it.”
Thompson pits these three at odds with each other, each pretending they were more on the level that they were, and each afraid of being called out. What makes this novel work so good is how tight Thompson’s writing is and how focused he is on the angles between these three characters, knowing that if you put them together and left them to their own devices, there would be fireworks.
There are three players in this game and none of the other clowns in this story matter one iota. They are just filler, stand-ins, extras as it were. First, there is Lilly Dillon, from a family of backwoods white trash who married at thirteen and widowed at fourteen, dumping little Roy off with her family until her father showed up with Roy under one arm and a horse whip in the other. Sticking Roy in boarding school, Lilly became increasingly useful as an employee until eventually she became someone who would make layoff bets on longshots around the country, protecting the syndicate’s money.
She wanted to be something other than mom, to Roy, and he resented her until he turned seventeen when he left. Indeed, as he got into his teens, she softened her voice when she spoke to him and there was a suppressed hunger in her eyes. Roy eventually worked the short con across the country, settling in Los Angeles, where he could use his cover as a traveling salesman while he worked the fools he found everywhere.
Roy’s one distraction was Moira Langtry, with her own background in grifting. She could match him phrase for phrase as they sparred. Strangely, though, she resembled none other than his mother in stature and type. ”You couldn’t say that they actually looked like each other; they were both brunettes about the same size, but there was absolutely no facial resemblance. It was more a type similarity than a personal one. They were both members of the same flock; women who knew just what it took to preserve and enhance their natural attractiveness. Women who were either endowed with what it took, or spared no effort in getting it.”
Thompson pits these three at odds with each other, each pretending they were more on the level that they were, and each afraid of being called out. What makes this novel work so good is how tight Thompson’s writing is and how focused he is on the angles between these three characters, knowing that if you put them together and left them to their own devices, there would be fireworks.
April 28, 2014
I have never read anybody who comes close to Thompson for his descriptions of violence, descriptions which in most books I skip for their tedium. He makes you feel like you are there, being buried alive, having your throat cut. He really is remarkable. But this is hard stuff to bring to the screen, the visual impact will never be the same as the written one. It isn’t the only problem with the movie version. The commentator introducing the movie to us, part of a crime noir weekend, said the Donald Westlake was not happy with the script. I don’t blame him, and I think that he showed better judgement of his own work than did those subsequently who think he did a fine job.
Rest here:
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December 9, 2012
The Grifters is an exercise in animal behavior, specifically the reptilian overtures of homo sapiens. It is a feral book. What saves it, what elevates the narrative from the primordial is its kinetic codes of communication. The novel triumphs through its five or six principal conversations. The characters expand outside of type and blur our ready verdicts. There are human truths being issued from the mouths of vipers: assassins, certainly, but ones with souls.
The film adaptation reveals the central set pieces, with one notable exception. It rained here this a.m. before the Manchester Derby, the solace of Roy Dillon was illuminating by contrast.
The film adaptation reveals the central set pieces, with one notable exception. It rained here this a.m. before the Manchester Derby, the solace of Roy Dillon was illuminating by contrast.
March 12, 2019
Through spot-on characterizations, thoughtful introspection and sharp dialogue, Thompson tells one hell of a story. While certainly dark, and with some disturbing themes, this ultimately comes off as an entertaining and oft-times amusing read. There is no honor among thieves, family and other relationships be damned. Grifters live on the edge, sucking off society for whatever they can get while keeping up appearances, and inevitably digging themselves in too deep. My only knock is that it was too short. Highly recommended!
May 18, 2021
MID-20TH CENTURY NORTH AMERICAN CRIME AND MYSTERY
Book 16 (out of 250-and my favorites, all rated 5 stars, are coming up!)
First, I gotta get on my soapbox:
"For a fearful shadow lies constantly over the residents of Uneasy Street," Thompson writes. And it's the author capitalizing the "U" and the "S". McCarthy's communist hunt of the 50's, ruining many careers and people, was the start of a problematic USA. Two Kennedy assassinations followed, then Nixon's impeachment, then the horrible treatment of Vets returning from Viet Nam, then Reagan's refusal to address AIDS, then the Clinton impeachment. Then the Supremes actually stop the counting of votes in a POTUS election and more (the Supremes, as of May 17th, 2021 are about to review Roe vs. Wade/Pro-Choice-and given that many Americans are screaming, "I have pro-choice, f*** that Covid vaccine", are we finally going to understand pro-choice completely or in a new way?) These are facts no matter how you feel about them. Trouble has been brewing. And is.
To the book:
I finished reading Elmore Leonard's "Rum Punch" (also titled Jackie Brown, a name Quentin Tarantino used instead of the "Jackie Burke" originally in "Rum Punch") a couple days ago and was disappointed, so I turned to Jim Thompson, hoping for a better crime novel. How does "The Grifter's" compare to "Rum Punch", as both are about grifts/cons but published about 40 years apart?
Hook - 4 stars: "As Roy Dillon stumbled out of the shop his face was a sickish green, and each breath he drew was an incredible agony." He's been at the "...butt end of a heavy club." A cop sees Roy, but Thompson surprises us. The cop is just...NICE and says, "Want us to take you to a doctor...We got a first-aid man over at the substation." Such a refreshing twist in this genre, as the cop doesn't see a drunk, or a trouble-maker, or a fighter. But even while in pain, Roy has gotta pull off a small grift/con, that's what he does. Like a kid in a candy store discretely pocketing a coveted sweet. Very 'nice' opening, actually. But oh, what a great line to end the four pages of the first chapter: "Death might be forestalled if he took proper care of himself. Otherwise, he had no more than three days to live." Short and sweet and just perfect.
PACE - 4 stars: For me, this doesn't read like a thrill-ride. Tim Willocks, in his introduction, writes that "...there is a strange tenderness that runs through The Grifters." The first quarter of the book is like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, having investigated and successfully resolved numerous crimes, decide to play a con game, just a little fun. Just a bit on the wrong side of the law. It was easy to take a break, but the last half is truly impossible to put down.
PLOT/CRIME - 5: The small cons build to bigger ones, and it'd be criminal of me to say another word about how Thompson fools us so seriously, leading us on to major fireworks.
CAST - 5: Roy Dillon is just such a good guy. He's smart: at 18 he's already in his mid-20s as far as wordly street smarts. He's a gentlemen. He's respected and has a good job as a salesman...and as a small time grifter on the side. His mother, Lilly Dillon, comes to town to take care of her little boy. She's a mid-level grifter. "D-don't be mean to me, Roy. Please, please don't. Y-you-you're b-breaking my heart..." But Roy suspects his mom's motives and replies, "Only one heart, Lilly?" Moira Langtry is Roy's lover..but is she also working a game?
I love this chain of sentences from Thompson, concerning Moira:
"Roy forgot to wonder about her age."
"She was old enough, was Moira Langtry."
"She was young enough."
Thompson's writing isn't forced. I never noticed a time when Thompson work's hard for a punchline, words just flow. For my money, Thompson, by keeping it simple, is a far better author than Elmore Leonard. Then there is the small, sweet Carol, hired by Lilly to help take care of her sick son. She has a secret, but it's a shocker when Thompson just, like always, casually mentions it.
With only 4 major characters in play, Thompson keeps things simple. Elmore packs "Rum Punch" with dozens of characters, many of them unnecessary, and that novel is just messy compared to the simplicity here. There are a number of scenes that make this cast unforgettable. As the novel moves forward, there is so much character development, even up to the final pages.
ATMOSPHERE - 4: Roy 'lived in a hotel caled the Grosvenor-Carlton, a name which hinted at a grandeur that was wholly non-existent." Thompson writes of a time when retirees and those without a steady income live in one of the hundreds of hotels catering, at $50 a month, to those who roam. Those running from something, running to anywhere. One hotel doesn't rent to single women as the manager is certain they are either whores or will soon be. "The clerks were elderly pensioners (a very British term today, but Thompson uses it casually), who were delighted to work for a miniscule salary and a free room. The Negro bellboy, whose badge of office was a discarded conductor's cap, also doubled as a janitor, elevator operator, and all-around handyman." Thompson paints the non-Hollywood portion of L.A. in just a few words. Do we need to know the bellboy wasn't white? Not really, but Thompson was probably right on the money at the time. And at one point, two characters reflect: "It was a two-hole privy, and sometimes they'd sit together in it for hours." That's romance, for sure, and it's the first time I've run across a reference to a two-hole privy. Thompson doesn't waste our time with weather reports, etc. Again, he keeps it simple.
SUMMARY- 4.4 stars. This is a far superior book than "Rum Punch". My favorite element is that the author cons the reader into thinking this is just a nice little story about nice people needing a few extra bucks. "Where had it all started, she [Moira} wondered. Where the beginning of this detour which sidetracked civilization into mixing drinks with one hand and stirring up bombs with the other." And that question, today, is on everyone's mind.
Book 16 (out of 250-and my favorites, all rated 5 stars, are coming up!)
First, I gotta get on my soapbox:
"For a fearful shadow lies constantly over the residents of Uneasy Street," Thompson writes. And it's the author capitalizing the "U" and the "S". McCarthy's communist hunt of the 50's, ruining many careers and people, was the start of a problematic USA. Two Kennedy assassinations followed, then Nixon's impeachment, then the horrible treatment of Vets returning from Viet Nam, then Reagan's refusal to address AIDS, then the Clinton impeachment. Then the Supremes actually stop the counting of votes in a POTUS election and more (the Supremes, as of May 17th, 2021 are about to review Roe vs. Wade/Pro-Choice-and given that many Americans are screaming, "I have pro-choice, f*** that Covid vaccine", are we finally going to understand pro-choice completely or in a new way?) These are facts no matter how you feel about them. Trouble has been brewing. And is.
To the book:
I finished reading Elmore Leonard's "Rum Punch" (also titled Jackie Brown, a name Quentin Tarantino used instead of the "Jackie Burke" originally in "Rum Punch") a couple days ago and was disappointed, so I turned to Jim Thompson, hoping for a better crime novel. How does "The Grifter's" compare to "Rum Punch", as both are about grifts/cons but published about 40 years apart?
Hook - 4 stars: "As Roy Dillon stumbled out of the shop his face was a sickish green, and each breath he drew was an incredible agony." He's been at the "...butt end of a heavy club." A cop sees Roy, but Thompson surprises us. The cop is just...NICE and says, "Want us to take you to a doctor...We got a first-aid man over at the substation." Such a refreshing twist in this genre, as the cop doesn't see a drunk, or a trouble-maker, or a fighter. But even while in pain, Roy has gotta pull off a small grift/con, that's what he does. Like a kid in a candy store discretely pocketing a coveted sweet. Very 'nice' opening, actually. But oh, what a great line to end the four pages of the first chapter: "Death might be forestalled if he took proper care of himself. Otherwise, he had no more than three days to live." Short and sweet and just perfect.
PACE - 4 stars: For me, this doesn't read like a thrill-ride. Tim Willocks, in his introduction, writes that "...there is a strange tenderness that runs through The Grifters." The first quarter of the book is like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, having investigated and successfully resolved numerous crimes, decide to play a con game, just a little fun. Just a bit on the wrong side of the law. It was easy to take a break, but the last half is truly impossible to put down.
PLOT/CRIME - 5: The small cons build to bigger ones, and it'd be criminal of me to say another word about how Thompson fools us so seriously, leading us on to major fireworks.
CAST - 5: Roy Dillon is just such a good guy. He's smart: at 18 he's already in his mid-20s as far as wordly street smarts. He's a gentlemen. He's respected and has a good job as a salesman...and as a small time grifter on the side. His mother, Lilly Dillon, comes to town to take care of her little boy. She's a mid-level grifter. "D-don't be mean to me, Roy. Please, please don't. Y-you-you're b-breaking my heart..." But Roy suspects his mom's motives and replies, "Only one heart, Lilly?" Moira Langtry is Roy's lover..but is she also working a game?
I love this chain of sentences from Thompson, concerning Moira:
"Roy forgot to wonder about her age."
"She was old enough, was Moira Langtry."
"She was young enough."
Thompson's writing isn't forced. I never noticed a time when Thompson work's hard for a punchline, words just flow. For my money, Thompson, by keeping it simple, is a far better author than Elmore Leonard. Then there is the small, sweet Carol, hired by Lilly to help take care of her sick son. She has a secret, but it's a shocker when Thompson just, like always, casually mentions it.
With only 4 major characters in play, Thompson keeps things simple. Elmore packs "Rum Punch" with dozens of characters, many of them unnecessary, and that novel is just messy compared to the simplicity here. There are a number of scenes that make this cast unforgettable. As the novel moves forward, there is so much character development, even up to the final pages.
ATMOSPHERE - 4: Roy 'lived in a hotel caled the Grosvenor-Carlton, a name which hinted at a grandeur that was wholly non-existent." Thompson writes of a time when retirees and those without a steady income live in one of the hundreds of hotels catering, at $50 a month, to those who roam. Those running from something, running to anywhere. One hotel doesn't rent to single women as the manager is certain they are either whores or will soon be. "The clerks were elderly pensioners (a very British term today, but Thompson uses it casually), who were delighted to work for a miniscule salary and a free room. The Negro bellboy, whose badge of office was a discarded conductor's cap, also doubled as a janitor, elevator operator, and all-around handyman." Thompson paints the non-Hollywood portion of L.A. in just a few words. Do we need to know the bellboy wasn't white? Not really, but Thompson was probably right on the money at the time. And at one point, two characters reflect: "It was a two-hole privy, and sometimes they'd sit together in it for hours." That's romance, for sure, and it's the first time I've run across a reference to a two-hole privy. Thompson doesn't waste our time with weather reports, etc. Again, he keeps it simple.
SUMMARY- 4.4 stars. This is a far superior book than "Rum Punch". My favorite element is that the author cons the reader into thinking this is just a nice little story about nice people needing a few extra bucks. "Where had it all started, she [Moira} wondered. Where the beginning of this detour which sidetracked civilization into mixing drinks with one hand and stirring up bombs with the other." And that question, today, is on everyone's mind.
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