Customer Reviews

Big Clock

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is first-rate. Who cares if it was first published in 1946? It's just as fresh now as it was then. For such a little book it has everything - irony, satire, unique plot, and suspense. The book has a sense of urgency as you read it because each of the chapters is written in the first person, but the chapters are not the first-person of the same character. A number of different characters are highlighted in this way, and this gives a curious sense of really getting to know the characters quickly. The book has a journalistic slant, and the main character, George Stroud, is placed in the position of trying to find himself as he is a key player in what turned out to be a murder of the woman that he had just spent the weekend with. George knows who the killer actually is, and he also knows that if this killer finds out who he George is, he will be silenced as the killer will want to shift blame to him. George is racing against the clock to keep his own identity secret and to save his life. - A very good noir novel.

This is a suspense thriller rather than a mystery or whodunnit. It's structured like Wilkie Collins' 19th century "The Moonstone" with chapters presented in the 1st person by various people. Similarly, it has the interesting feature of having different characters' views of the same individual. While the details are a bit dated (the low prices of things are amazing), the plot is not, & the author succeeds admirably in making it a real page-turner. I stayed up to the wee hours to finish it. It's a bit hard-boiled in languaging & has the clock metaphor which didn't really do much for me. Also, he mentions "her Adam's Apple" -- not anatomically correct. IMHO though the art aspect is great, especially Louise Patterson. Her chapter is brilliant! Overall this book is a fun, fast-paced, read. Enjoy!

The basis for the Ray Milland film of the same name, and its 80s remake with Kevin Costner NO WAY OUT, Kenneth Fearing's THE BIG CLOCK is one of the most famous and most ingenious noir thrillers of the 30s and 40s. A magazine publisher much like Henry Luce has murdered his mistress in a rage; his top aide convinces him to pin it on the last man to see the woman alive (whose face and name the publisher does not know). They enlist the help of the editor of the publishing house's crime magazine to lead the manhunt--a man who happens to be the very one for whom they're searching. The existential implications of engaging in a manhunt for yourself do not seem to escape Fearing, but his feat with this work is to expand even beyond that. The publication house which forms the novel's central locale brings out magazines that cover almost every aspect of modern mass culture, from news to business to Hollywood to true crime. And, stepping even beyond that, because the novel's key figure also collects the art of an obscure painter (which becomes crucial to the central mystery), THE BIG CLOCK also interrogates the ways in which high art is itself dependent upon mass culture. Sometimes Fearing's book is too ambitious for its own good (the multiple narrator trick is not handled as deftly as you'd like), but on the whole its not only a tight little thriller but it also manages to engage intelligently with some of the most important social and cultural premises of its day. This is a book that greatly deserved to be rediscovered by NYRB.

George Stroud works for a mega-publisher that seems a lot like Time-Life or Conde Nast; he's just a big, reliable wheel in the company clock, working in a "gilded cage full of gelded birds," a building that "seemed to prefer human sacrifices, of the flesh and of the spirit." As the executive editor of one of the company's more successful properties, a true crime magazine, he nevertheless has a somewhat uneasy relationship with his boss, Earl Janoth, and he spends time in front of the mirror imagining what demands he should make.

When Stroud cheats on his wife and sleeps with his Janoth's girlfriend, the boss-employee relationship gets a wee more complicated--especially when Janoth shows up at her apartment and Stroud barely escapes, seen but not recognized. Moments later, Janoth and the woman get into a fight (each accusing the other of having same-sex trysts--this in a 1946 novel!), and she ends up dead on the floor. What happens next is a game of chess, with each side trying to pin the murder on the other: Janoth and his man Friday use the resources of the firm, assigning Stroud to head the team that must locate the man seen fleeing from the apartment; Stroud, however, knows his boss is guilty but understands that all the evidence points to himself. He is now literally trapped at work.

To reveal any more of the plot would be saying too much. Most of the novel is told from the perspective of Stroud, but Fearing includes a few chapters told from the others' points of view to fill in the details (and it also unexpectedly adds to the feeling of entrapment, since they all seem to be closing in on Stroud). The entire novel is suspensefully, masterfully told. In the end, Fearing intentionally leaves some loose ends, but he does so with a joke Stroud tells to his daughter, about a little girl who pulls away the threads of her sweater until she "was just a heap of yarn lying on the floor." The 1948 movie, a classic in its own right (sanitized but mostly faithful to the novel), leaves no thread dangling, but I prefer the morally ambiguous ending of the novel. After all, we know who the killer is--we've always known--but rather than concerning himself with the formulaic conventions of detective fiction, Fearing keeps his focus on his theme: the company keeps grinding along, the company man keeps working, and the clock keeps ticking.

The Big Clock a classic work of noir, twice made into movies. Nicely plotted, based on characters who drink, sleep around, and lie, and who are not much characterized beyond that. The twist that makes this book a classic is that the main character is forced to lead an investigation that, if successful, will result in his being framed for murder. The plot moves briskly and despite the main character's subtle efforts to slow the investigation, his situation soon grows dire.

I will say no more, which I wish could also said of Nicholas Christopher's introduction at the start of the book. It is an intelligent analysis of the story and its failings, but matter-of-factly gives away the entire plot and its resolution. I urge you, if you have not read the book before, to skip the introduction until after you have done so.

If you saw and liked the film you should read the book. Not only a great book but also a metaphor for the rat race of "The Organization Man" era.

The book's classic Crime Noir plot is not itself surprising, though it is incredibly well done and keeps you on the edge of your seat. The pacing and the shifting points of view, however, were a continual surprise. Just when the book is about to get caught up in its simple story, it shifts to a different perspective and pauses there just long enough to slow down the pace and set up the next tick of the clock.

Critics consider The Big Clock to be one of the classic mystery novels. So I jumped at the chance to buy it when I saw a dog-eared copy in a used bookstore for 25 cents. I enjoyed reading the book. I cannot, however, give it more than three stars. It was a bit of a letdown due to the high expectations that I had prior to reading it.

The Big Clock concerns George Stroud, a hard-drinking adulterer. One evening Stroud drops his mistress off at her home. As Stroud leaves, from a distance he sees his boss approach the mistress. (The boss is also involved with the mistress). Subsequently, the boss murders the mistress in a fit of passion.

To complicate matters, the boss then assigns Stroud to find the mysterious stranger who saw the boss before the murder. Stroud is forced to conduct the investigation that leads the boss closer to uncovering Stroud's identity.

It's a great setup, but author Kenneth Fearing cannot quite make it work. I do not think that there is one fatal flaw in The Big Clock, but a number of lesser faults detract from the reader's enjoyment. One, the plot of the book is a little too neat. The Big Clock is a short read (144 pages); I think that the book is too short to develop a complex novel with many characters. Two, Fearing uses multiple narrators to tell the story. I have no objections to this technique per se, but books that use it often end up with a choppy, uneven quality. Unfortunately, this is the case with The Big Clock. Three, I don't want to give up any key details, but some of George Stroud's behavior during the investigation is irrational.

The Big Clock is well worth reading. But it is not my favorite novel of suspense.

The Big Clock is considered to be a classic representation of American Noir and, in many ways, I agree with that assessment. It has all of the elements that reflect that style of writing: a dark atmosphere, hardboiled narration, crime, suspense, obsessive passions, guilt ridden individuals caught up in circumstances beyond their control, etc. But this 1946 Kenneth Fearing novel fell flat for me and I can't say that I much enjoyed it.

George Stroud, one of the novel's several first-person narrators, works at a major publishing corporation and has a nice little life going for himself. His world includes a wife by the name of Georgette and a little girl called Georgia, a family that seems to genuinely enjoy calling each other by the name "George" in casual conversation. But all is not what it appears to be. George Stroud has cheated on his wife in the past and he makes little effort to change that habit, even going so far as to start an affair with the mistress of the founder of the company that employs him, one Earl Janoth.

Circumstances catch up with Stroud at the end of one weekend spent with this mistress of both men when, upon returning her to her apartment, he is glimpsed by Earl Janoth who has unexpectedly shown up at the apartment house. The brief encounter with Janoth becomes a threat to Stroud's very life after Janoth, in a sudden fit of rage, strikes the young woman a death blow with the wine decanter from which they were drinking before he confronted her about the mystery man he had seen with her.

The novel takes a Hitchcockian twist when Stroud is called into Earl Janoth's office and is placed in charge of a massive project to identify the mysterious man who might have the power to place Janoth at the murder scene. Stroud, of course, has to appear to be making the most of the company's massive resources to find the man while, at the same time, trying to make sure that he is never identified as being that man himself.

Author Kenneth Fearing still had me up to this point. I enjoyed watching Stroud squirm as he tried so desperately to appear to be the hound rather than the rabbit. The suspense level continued to build nicely and I wondered if he was going to avoid the goons who wanted to kill him or if he was going to have to finally confront them directly. But the timing involved in Fearing's solution is just so improbable that it ruined the novel for me and I wonder why the book is considered to be such a classic of its type. The book did translate well to film and has been made into two movies, The Big Clock starring Ray Milland and No Way Out, a Kevin Costner film.

'The Big Clock' by Kenneth Fearing is a short yet delightful novel of suspense. Written in 1946, the book must have been considered scandalous due to its explicit references to lesbianism (although this has little to do with the plot). No doubt it was relegated as "pulp fiction" and subsequently ignored until much later when that genre was rediscovered. Thankfully the book is now in print (at least here in the UK).

'The Big Clock' has a very clever plot ... so clever that I'd hate to spoil it for anyone. Let's just say it involves murder, the attempt to frame the murder on an innocent party, with this innocent party caught in the middle. The anxiety level increases very nicely ... 'The Big Clock' is a page-turner. I have only two minor quibbles with it: the beginning is a bit slow (and odd), and the ending seemed somewhat flat.

BTW, the film 'No Way Out' is said to be based on this book. While the film is terrific let us say it is *very loosely* based on the book.

Bottom line: justly deserving its status as a crime classic. Recommended.