Saturday, June 4, 2011

Thompson, Jim; Pop. 1280

Thompson is probably the coldest and most spare of the hard-boiled school of crime writers. He has no standard formula or regular hero like Hammett's Continental Op but deals with the lower strata of human existence as he finds it. This book is
set in the early years of the 20th century and tells of a sheriff in a small town with a population of 1280. His aim is to do as
little as possible to avoid over-exerting himself but circumstances somewhat change this as it is election year and his lack of
effort has led to adverse comments and a strong opponent. In sparse language we learn that he eats a lot, was tricked into
marriage but has sex regularly with two other women, kills the two local pimps and then manages to point the finger of blame at another, kills the husband of one of his mistresses and a local black who learns he has done this and eventually gets rid of his wife and her live-in brother (or lover). There is a strong leavening of humour in the telling without this creating any
sympathy for the sheriff whose apparent dumb exterior hides a cunning, manipulative and psychotic mind. The end is a tad
sudden leaving matters unresolved. The book forms the basis of the film 'Coup de Torchon' which transfers the action fo
Franch West Africa with the lead role taken by the inimitable Philipe Noiret for whom one cannot help but feel sympathy,
misplaced though this is.

Grimwood, Jon Courtenay: Stamping Butterflies

I must have read the trilogy of 'Felaheen', 'Effendi' and 'Pashazade' some time before I started reviewing as it was my memory
of those books that made me choose this one which links events in 1969 Marrakesh with an attempted assination of the US
President in the present day of the novel and life on a distant planet in the far future. Gradually the strands come together with, understandably, the links between the former two more obvious than the final connection. The writing evokes the
different settings very tellingly and the complicated tale keeps one's attention throughout. The jumps from 1969 to now to
whenever do sometimes jar a little for this reader - I was almost tempted to read each part through rather than accepting the
developing interlinking pattern. Very inventive and very well written.

Hughes, Dorothy B.: In a Lonely Place

A masterly tale of a psychotic killer whose identity is known to the reade from the start. Dixon Steele, a World War II veteran,
has moved to Los Angeles to write, being supported by a monthly cheque from his uncle. He is living in an apartment which
belongs to a former Princeton colleague who is supposedly in Rio. His best wartime friend is now a sergeant detective with
the Los Angeles police and he uses this friendship to keep abreast of developments in the latest murder, the sixth in recent
months. His friend's wife is not altogether sure of him but the wartime friendship prevails. Steele takes up with a woman in
the apartments who, like him, is an opportunist but they fall in love though she does keep some distance between them. The
denouement, after more murders, results in his being caught with the twist being that all the murders had duplicated his killing of an English girl whom he had loved but then strangled. Tightly plotted and written, the book confirms Dorothy B.
Hughes' place at the very top of thriller writers of the period - if not of all time.
The book was made into a film a few years after its publication with Humphrey Bogart in the lead and Gloria Grahame as the
girl living in the same apartments. Although the names are the same, the plot is both simplified and coarsened with Bogart
playing an established screenwriter with a violent temper. The end result is the same though it would appear that he commits only one murder. Both Bogart and Grahame are on top form and Nicholas Ray's directing is competent enough to make the film a highly considered one but it is not a patch on the book.