[.ca] Recoil (ISBN 0679733086)

not his best-he had a orthodontic bill, maybe?:
I like Jim Thompson. Good Thompson books are solid 3's and 3 1/2's with me. This is not a good Thompson book. He does hard-boiled right, with dialogue breaking over the ear like music. Paranoia? Oh boy, can he invoke it, and personify it in characters haunted by less than ideal situations! You don't know who to trust and the pace keeps you turning pages. And that might describe this book were it not for the last pages. I can deal with multiple betrayal and keep that stuff if not squared in my own head, then at least reasonably coherent. But these female characters are complex to the point of unbelievability. I won't 'spoil' this for you, but given what we know and have seen, having it end like it did and with whom we've met is akin to entering your kitchen pantry and expecting to emerge in downtown Peking. IT'S IMPOSSIBLE. Worse, it's capital B bathos. Plausibility takes a U-turn into a 'happy ending' which has all marks of why certain people distrust and even dislike happy endings. I don't have this problem, but this books ends with a prototypical example of a bad happy ending. The last pages are as if Judith Light and Tony Danza (of 80's sitcom Who's the Boss?) were asked to collaborate on a script for a pilot episode of husband and wife crime-fighting tv series they would star in. It's that bad. The 'romantic dialogue' might've been lifted from a movie of the kind you see for free in certain by the hour motels. Hideous. Read Getaway or After Dark, My Sweet instead and skip this strictly 'For the Money' piece of Thompson's oevre. k

a thrilling novel with a weak, tacked on happy ending:
This book speeds along almost as an afterthought. The plot is slick and sharp and a great deal of fun. The characters are the same somewhat stupid lowlifes that Thompson always wrote about. They have a subtle uniqueness that certainly separates them from the protagonists of many of his better know works. It is 178 pages long. 170 of those pages are wonderful. Then, likely at the insistance of some lamebrained publishing house who didn't like all the darkness and sordidness of what was happening in the story, there is this absolutely unrealistic ending in regards to everything that has happened before and the logical direction such useless people's lives would take. It ends on an up note (something that in general I am not a fan of, but even for those who are, at least a happy ending should make sense in the lives of these characters we have gotten to know). There is even a somewhat cynical epilogue two page final chapter that wraps things up so neat and nice and tidy for the hopeless, slimy "heroes" of the book. It doesn't make sense. It should have ended with the likely outcome of any scumbag in such a situation. Life goes on, they are fogotten and nothing good will ever enter their lives again.

Weak first draft of The Getaway:
Recoil is not a terrible book, but it is not as strong as most of Thompson's other work. It is a predecessor to The Getaway, and the latter is a much better reworking of the former. Like The Golden Gizmo, South of Heaven, and Trick of the Tail, it is worth reading, but only after Population 1280, Savage Night, Hell of a Woman, Swell Looking Babe, Killer Inside Me, Nothing Man, Kill-off, Criminal, etc. You get the idea. It is better than The Transgressors, however, and I suspect it is better than Cropper's Cabin.

OK Thomspon:
"Recoil" is second-tier work by Jim Thompson (check out "The Grifters" and "The Killer In Me"), but it's still an entertaining quick read. The main character is Pat Cosgrove, who's been in prison for 15 years for bank robbery. He gets out on parole with the help of Dr. Luther, a discredited and shady psychologist who now works with local politicians. Pat figures out pretty quickly that Dr. Luther must have had a reason for helping him, but what is it? Pat becomes involved with a bunch of politicians, lawyers, civil servants, and (of course) women, any of whom might be double crossing him. The action is fast and the writing is enjoyable. As with some of his other books, a lot of the action is unbelievable, but so what?

AVERAGE THOMPSON:
This is just an average Jim Thompson book, which still makes it better than a lot of the junk out there right now, but not as good as "The Killer Inside Me" or "The Getaway". It's nonetheless worth reading, and as a woman, reading Thompson is such a treat. I get a lot of flack for saying this, and many women disagree, but his female characters are amazing. I just love them all. They're so brilliantly written, and besides the fact that his books are based on Greek mythology (ripping off the classics is a tried and true way of writing a great story) that's the main reason why I read him. This book is no letdown in the awesome babes department. Two very unforgettable criminal-type women inhabit the pages of this book.