The best Noir crime books-03
Posted in Writing on 04/17/2009 10:21 pm by Simon
‘As Roy Dillon stumbled out of the shop his face was a sickish green, and each breath he drew was an incredible agony.’
Roy Dillon, a charming young man, is a dedicated ‘short con’ artist. His lover Moira wants them to work the ‘long con’ together; but Roy’s mother, the poisonous Lily, who works a horse racing scam for gangster Bobo Justus, wants her out of the way.
Thompson wrote flashier crime books, such as the Getaway, but I reckon this is his best, and it’s certainly the best book ever written about con-artists. It reveals not just the details of their schemes but their twisted pathology and alienation: these characters might be bound by love and blood but they just can’t trust each other, and their antagonisms have murderous and, well, ‘Oedipal’ consequences.
This is more than just an acute chronicle of the low life; it feels as if these three people live and breath, and you can’t help but be drawn into their twilight world.
And it’s another book that made a great film.