Customer Reviews

The Grifters

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I saw the movie version of the Grifters when it was released in 1990 and really loved it. I finally got around to reading the novel and was very impressed. The book is a very quick read, but manages to pack in a great deal of enjoyable material. The book chronicles the story of Roy Dillon, who is a second generation grifter. His mother is Lilly Dillon, who works for the mob, and one of the most ferocious women ever created for fiction. Roy works the short-con, cheating businessmen and people in bars. He meets Moira Langtry, who has a history of pulling long-term con jobs with an ex-boyfriend. She tries to convince Roy that they should team up, with disastrous results. The book is gritty, with vivid characters and a terrific ending. I've read quite a few Thompson novels and this is the best. In fact, it may be one of the best pulp novels ever written.

"The Grifters" is another of Jim Thompson's electric
charged dances with the devil. It is so hard and so brutally bleak that
it undercuts what passes for reality and gives us the real truth that
is right out there in front of us with people like Moria and Roy
and Lilly whom we would rather not see and therefore do not as we
pass them by on the street. Jim Thompson saw them though, and for that
I am so grateful. Thompson was a stunning writer and this is one of
his best books. He broke such new ground back in the fifties and
sixties and his books still resonate with passion and ultimate greed
and fear of finding it and never attaining it, not one single time,
just more grittiness, more grubbiness. Thompson writes them as
them. He is there in the snake pit along with his characters. He knows
them from the inside out. There is such fatal laughter in his words I
can almost feel the death shroud in them, for that is the grave they
dance beside, right on the lip of it. Roy is a small time con who wants
to make the big time. Lily is his mother who has all the spider traits
of a Thompson woman, hard and bitter and cold even in
Thompson's world. Moria doesn't stand a prayer. No one in Thompson's
cruel and real and terrifying world do. Roy chases his own
"golden frammis", that unobtainable dream, and Lily-well,
Lily lusts after her son sexually for sure, but money is something that
keeps better and what Lily does to him to get that next installment on
the ladder to frammis attaining is so true and so startling, even
now, that it hurts the eyes to read it, as she steps out into the City
of Angels. Medea, listen up. Thompson held me enthralled one summer as
I read all of his books in a row. His characters sometimes narrate
them apparently from hell. The violence is so unremittingly grotesque
you have to back away from it, but these are not sideshow characters
like on daytime TV talk shows. These are real people, admit it or not,
more screwd up than us perhaps, or just more willing to not hide it,
and many are insane, and Thompson got in those minds, like Lily's
and brought them to a kind of unapologizing life, and I admire them
for their terrible honesty, in their skin stripped teeth bared
claws extended grasping for whatever pleases them in their crude
motley little world where you can almost smell the sweat soiled sheets
of little cheap hotel rooms and the sick fear that sleeps so uneasily
on them, as well as see those speckled bathroom mirrors where these
pasty faced red eyed ultimate losers see their faces in the morning and
know the pain is just going to get worst. But they don't know what else
to do. Who does, ultimately? I was galvinized from the first of
his books. "The Grifters" is roman noir at its
very finest. There is such a knife edge cut to Thompson's words, such
a fever in them that they seem to be written in a runaway passion
that is a mad rushing to a hell worse than the Biblical one, like was
found in "The Getaway" that beggers any kind of
description. And the thing is, if they had to do it over again, knowing
what was in store, I think they would. For the most part, like Lou Ford
in"The Killer Inside Me" and like Lilly in
"The Grifters", these are desperate odds masquerading as
humans who are not possessing anything inside them but a larcenous need
for bloodletting as much as for money. For power and making pain
around them which makes them feel good. And the hopelessness of Roy and
Moria and Lily and of Lou Ford maybe the most demonic character ever
put to paper is that certain something that keeps all his characters (I
doubt that,if Roy lived through that ending, or was writing about it
from hell, he would even for one moment think badly of his mother,
for wouldn't he have done the same thing to her?)racing for something
that is so wonderfully ironic and mean spirited and ghoulishly give up
you can't win funny, that is there in only the grittiest of dark
alleys where somehow in poverty of mind and heart and soul there is
the shadow that is the sun that will burn dry all that frantic pain
that arcs from one sentence to another in this and all of
Thompson's books....

Now we Americans recognize the writing of Jim Thompson and deem him a worthy successor to Cain and Chandler. When he first came out though, in the 1950s and 1960s, he was more readily admired by readers abroad. Movies of his work were not made until relatively recently. Grifters are con men and women. In this novel, Thompson has the grifters down cold. The leads are Lily and her son, Roy. They have a very high tension relationship with one another and the the latent sexuality lurking between them is not the least of it. Marching directly into the midst of this deadly duo is Moira, also a con woman, and Roy's present girlfriend. Moira gets the not so bright idea of stealing money from Lily. These are all fascinating characters, very dark and compelling with not much in the way of redeeming features. This is a great novel with the same hard boiled edginess that Cain and Chandler used. This was made into a movie with Angelica Huston as mother Lily, John Cusack as son Roy and Annette Bening as Moira. It couldn't have been cast any better as they were superb with the first rate screenplay. The movie was moved up to present day LA whereas the book was set back in the 1950s. I highly recommend both.

Jim Thompson, known as the king of 'noir' crime novels, has a style which might not appeal to everyone. His novels consist of characters that have the look, feel and sound of B-movie gangsters. Yet his stories always contains at least one character that is either extraordinarily vile or pathetic (a hapless loser).

In The Grifters we are entertained by three rotten individuals: a "nickel-dime" con artist ("grifter"), his equally crooked youthful mother, and his older girlfriend who'll do just about anything for money. It's the interplay between these characters rather than the crime themselves which are most fascinating. In effect each character tries to manipulate the other to his/her pure selfish advantage. Love? You won't find any in this book. Oh, and the ending is really g-o-o-d.

Bottom line: sleazy, depressing yet utterly compelling. Amongst Thompson's finer works.

(The film adaptation of The Grifters is also highly recommended.)

The mystery/crime fiction writer Donald Westlake adapted this book into the screenplay for the movie "The Grifters," which is out on DVD. That DVD will make one appreciate the postive and negative aspects of this story by Thompson, albeit indirectly. The "grift," or the daily habit Roy and his mother have of snatching easy money through dishonest means, is a stand-in for Thompson's own experiences with alcoholism. Roy can't peel himself away from the grift, despite the isolation it causes him and his condemnation of his mother's behavior. Roy's stomach problems and stay in the hospital were derived from Thompson's ulcer problems. Thus, there are strong autobiographical elements in this story, which in my opinion take over the book and crowd out the Moira and Carol characters. Westlake was wise to pare down the Carol subplot, even if it took away from Roy's heartlessness (I found Roy a little more sympathetic in the movie than the book) -- and perhaps some of Thompson's guilty recollections.

What makes this novel so interesting is that it's the rivalry between the two women, Moira and Lilly, that drives the plot, despite the fact that they only meet twice (three times in the movie). Westlake understood this and distributed the scenes among all three of the main characters.

I could see how someone could pick up this as their first Jim Thompson book and conclude that he was overrated; my recommendation is to also watch the DVD and read the real masterpiece "The Killer Inside Me."

The Grifters was the first Jim Thompson book I read. This book made him my favorite author of all times. The characters are alive, with you, next door. Anyone who wants to live on the edge.Lilly and Roy live on the wild side. Jim Thompson sucks you into their world. This was no 400 page novel with lots of filler, it was written with broad knowing strokes. I want to own all of his books. I did read others but this is my all-time favorite. Lilly was a tough strong mom who happened to be a grifter but wanted better for her son Roy, above all they were survivors, at any cost. I must say I find the infrences and hints to incestuous desires non-existing This was only played out in the in the movie. I'll have to read it again. I would love to own a hardcover edition but alas it's out of print. I can't afford a first-edition. But alas who knows what the grift will bring.

Be forewarned. This novel is not for the faint of heart. If you are easily offended, do not read The Grifters. In this classic example of pulp fiction, Jim Thompson takes us on a cruel and hideous journey through a few weeks in the life of Roy Dillon, a practitioner of the short con working in Los Angeles. Thompson's writing is raw and unflinching. No holds are barred, no topic is taboo. He has created a fascinating portrayal of society's criminal netherworld in a way that is thoroughly engaging even as it dares you not to avert your eyes. Reading The Grifters is a powerful, visceral experience that stays with you.

The Grifters is a noir classic, and a must read for all Thompson fans, or new fans of noir. Crime & Con Men, Greed & Love, and more Greed. The Grifters is as smooth as silk, and his noir style hits all the harder because of it.

Author Jim Thompson (1906-77) catches the flavor of grifting with this crisp tale set in Los Angeles in the late 1950's. The main character is Roy Dillon, a young salesman and short-con operator a bit too soft for this line - he nearly dies from a beating when caught short-changing a cashier. Actually, Roy is merely a babe compared to his older-and-wiser girlfriend Moira Langtry and gun-toting mother Lilly. Moira emerges as a manipulative long-con artist seeking a new partner, while Lilly is a still-attractive toughie who places large bets for the mob at racetracks. Each character works their angles, seeks to manipulate, and conceals a few things too. The story has compelling friction between the characters including some sexual tension between Roy and his mother. This is be pulp fiction, but a gripping read.

This book is worth a look, as is the nicely-cast 1990 movie starring John Cusack (Roy), Annette Benning (Moira) and Angelica Huston (Lilly).

I can still remember the stark scenes in the 1990 movie starring John Cusack, Anjelica Huston and Annette Benning. Donald Westlake wrote the sharp script. Roy Dillon is a low-level conman in L.A. His mother Lilly, her youthful looks still preserved, is also a grifter. She has mixed feelings on Roy as a a player in the illicit business. Moira, Roy's girlfriend, tries to bring him in her big con. There was more tension between Moira and Lilly in the movie. Recommended for noir fans, THE GRIFTERS is a brisk read (2 hours) and the plot straightforward. The prose style is smoother than Thompson's earlier books.