Customer Reviews

Recoil

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

 

 

"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?

"Recoil" was the first Jim Thompson book I ever read, but it certainly won't be the last. I began reading it late one night, and finished it the next morning after only a few hours sleep.

Intense, concise, surprising, noir-istic, hard boiled. These words barely begin to describe Thompson's writing. When Thompson describes a river contaminated with oil from a nearby pump, an acrid sulfer-like scent tickles you nostrils.

To label Thompson a "Mystery" writer is easy, yet also a disservice to his real literary talent. To not, is criminal. Sure, some characters are plot-devices, but all are so real, you'd swear you'd met them somewhere.

Hammet, Chandler, Thompson. I didn't believe it before, but I do now. The man belongs with the masters. Readers of Grisham, Turow, Crichton and their ilk should try Thompson. He chops away the pretentiousness and tedious page-filler, and turns in a thriller twice as good and a third as long.

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 nice, fast-paced book, but not on the same level as such classics as "The Killer Inside Me" and "After Dark, My Sweet" (my favorite). It has one of those convoluted noir plots (think "Touch of Evil") where about ten double crosses are occuring simultaneously and the reader has to draw a chart of who is betraying who and why as they read along. Good characterization and a couple of great scenes elevate it above the average crime novel. If you are a Thompson fan, definitely read it. If not, "Recoil" probably isn't the best place to start.

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.

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.

The writing is crisp and believable and most of the dialogue is great, but Recoil's ending will make you... well... recoil. The story focuses on a month in the life of Pat Cosgrove who has recently been paroled to the sponsorship of Doc Luther. Doc gives Pat a place to live, money, clothes, a car, and a job which doesn't require him to even show up. Pat thinks that's all great, but wonders why and realizes that Doc has got to be up to something. Pat has been in prison for the past fifteen years--for attempting a bank robbery and hijacking when he was seventeen years old.

Pat meets Madeline who is a thirty-something woman that he immediately finds incredibly sexually irresistable (remember--he's been in prison for fifteen years). Madeline is Doc's estranged wife who is having an affair with Doc's business associate. The three of them are planning numerous schemes to defraud the public, manipulate local political elections, and bilk insurance companies. Doc has freed Pat to frame him for murder but Madeline plans to double cross Doc and take it one step further--she wants Pat to really commit murder.

The novel finally comes to a climax with Pat snitching out all of the bad guys which results in their imprisonment and his pardon. As mentioned by other reviewers, the after-ending ending is what makes the novel truly stupid. In a last-moment change of heart, the ruthless Madeline falls for the simple Pat and herself becomes a stooge on her prior cronies, giving up her half million dollar insurance payout so she can be happy and in love with her ex-con boyfriend. Whatever. It's an OK read until the last few pages of pabulum.

One final note--the cover of this edition shows a man with a drink flung in his face. This scene happens in the novel when Lila, Doc's high-class prostitute, flings a drink in Doc's face. However, Doc is sixty-something and described as obese with bulging eyes, thick glasses, and protruding upper teeth--who is that thin dapper youngster on the cover supposed to be? Doc Jr.?

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.

In the early 1950s, Jim Thompson wrote a staggering number of pulp fiction novels. Some of them, like The Killer Inside Me, have become classics of American fiction. Others, like The Golden Gizmo, are best forgotten. Sad to say, Recoil (1953) falls squarely in the latter category.
Recoil's protagonist, a prison parolee by the name of Pat Cosgrove, finds himself in a situation strikingly similar to the one experienced by K in Franz Kafka's The Trial. Cosgrove spends most of the novel uncomfortably at the mercy of government officials and their lobbyist sponsors. He does not know what they want from him. Similarly, he does not know what will become of him (though he's quite sure it's going to be bad). However, unlike the Kafka masterpiece, Recoil ends on a very upbeat note. One which is as out of place as you can get. It turns out that Cosgrove's tormentors are far less competent than he is, enabling him to turn the tables on them and live happily ever after.
Bottom line: Recoil, a hodgepodge collection of pulp crime cliches that fail to gel together, comes off as contrived and ends abruptly in a resolution best described as a copout. Not recommended.

'Recoil' is in some ways classic Jim Thompson noir. The characters and dialogue are delicious 1950s trash. The women are floosies, the men are dopes. In 'Recoil' we have a lame brained ex-con who was released from prison courtesy of a guy with whom he had yet to meet. This guy turns out to be a nasty piece of work, and the company he keeps isn't much better. Soon the ex-con realizes something is wrong. Was he being set up just to crash and return to prison? All is revealed in the end. Yes, the ending is kind of goofy ... as if the author just smashed the words together arbitrarily. But this is not uncommon with Thompson novels.


Bottom line: certainly not among the better Jim Thompson novels. Nonetheless it is the sort of fast read perfect for a rainy afternoon or for that long, boring flight.