Is Carl Bigelow a fresh-faced college kid looking for a room, or is he a poised hit man tracking down his victim? And if Carl is really two people, what about everyone around him? Savage Night is Thompson at his best, with plot reversals and nightmarish shifts of identity.
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Is Carl Bigelow a fresh-faced college kid looking for a room, or is he a poised hit man tracking down his victim? And if Carl is really two people, what about everyone around him? Savage Night is Thompson at his best, with plot reversals and nightmarish shifts of identity.
About the Author
(1906 - 1977) James Meyers Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma. He began writing fiction at a very young age, selling his first story to True Detective when he was only fourteen. Thompson eventually wrote twenty-nine novels, all but three of which were published as paperback originals. Thompson also wrote two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films “The Killing” and “Paths of Glory”). An outstanding crime writer, the world of his fiction is rife with violence and corruption. In examining the underbelly of human experience and American society in particular, Thompson’s work at its best is both philosophical and experimental. Several of his novels have been filmed by American and French directors, resulting in classic noir including The Killer Inside Me (1952), After Dark My Sweet (1955), and The Grifters (1963).
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Thompson was famous for his nihilistic endings, and it's hard to beat this one. His depiction of total insanity and the bloody violence he saw in endemic to the human condition will chill you to the bone. Forget Stephen King: Thompson is the most frightening American writer you will ever read.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
By Andrew M
Format:Paperback
I'm a HUGE fan of so-called "hard-boiled" and "pulp" fiction, but strangely enough I've avoided Jim Thompson...a little like an avid mountain climber not wanting to tackle Mt. Everest. Mr. Thompson's reputation has always gotten in the way of me wanting to read him and I was scared of the possibility of my being disappointed.....
Well SAVAGE NIGHT is my de-virginizing experience of reading a Jim Thompson novel (and no, watching THE GRIFTERS, THE GETAWAY, and THE KILLING doesn't count) well dammit if the man isn't a kick you in the groin, grab you by the shirt, slap you in the face writer----the kind I LOVE!!!!
SAVAGE NIGHT follows a doomed hit-man on his last legs (and teeth and eyes for that matter) who latches himself onto a dead - end town to do a killin' for THE MAN.
Suspicions, betrayals, and desperation follow him like a sick shadow......and well, let's just say that more than one corpse lays lifeless by the end of these bloody pages.
A quick read and entertaining one...if you're into black coffee/unfiltered cigarette lit.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is one of Thompson's best doomed novels. Carl Bigelow, like most of Jim Thompson's better protagonists is born broken. Unlike typical noir, there isn't some line that Carl Bigelow has crossed that has doomed him; he had no chance from birth. And unlike most of Thompson's protagonists, Bigger is physically a mess. There's just not much of him left. He needs his glasses, false teeth, toupe and platform shoes to make him somewhat of a whole man. And what with suffering from consumption, there's less of him all the time.
The ending of this one is dizzying.
Note. As he does in several of his works, Jim Thompson makes a subtle cameo in this one.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Relentless and Skewed
I've read Jim Thompson's Pop. 1280 and The Killer Inside Me. The characters and settings in those works seem tangible enough; they are stories about real people placed in... Read more
Published 14 months ago by C. Cleveland
2.0 out of 5 stars
It is certainly different........
Savage Night deals with Charlie Bigger who is sent to a small town to kill someone who is going to give evidence in a trial. Read more
Published on March 10, 2010 by Peter
3.0 out of 5 stars
Thompson combines genres.
To look at Carl Bigelow you would never suspect he's a cold blooded hitman. Diminutive, baby-faced and, of all things, tubercular, Carl's appearance says victim, not victimizer. Read more
Published on October 26, 2009 by Michael G.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good, not great, Thompson
The terse but eminently descriptive prose that is Jim Thompson's forte is on display in Savage Night, and the sense of a believable, hard-boiled world, despite the perversity... Read more
Published on August 28, 2007 by Stephen Adelman
5.0 out of 5 stars
1953 psycho noir sets the bar
It's ticklish to comment much on SAVAGE NIGHT without giving away the plot and ending. Carl Bigelow, an unreliable and offcenter narrator, is a hitman who shows up in Pearldale, a... Read more
Published on May 11, 2007 by Ed Lynskey,
2.0 out of 5 stars
One of Thompson's Fizzles
I started this novel two years ago, put it aside, then picked it up again and decided to finish it. Getting to the last page was a chore, and I remembered why I had previously... Read more
Published on May 12, 2006 by Eric Leiston
4.0 out of 5 stars
a rather strange, gratuitously violent piece by Jim Thompson
Jim Thompson wrote some fine noir novels in his time. The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me and The Grifters are amongst his famous and best works. Read more
Published on May 15, 2003 by lazza
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great hard-boiled noir novel
Jim Thompson is one of America's great hardboiled/noir writers, and there will never be another writer like him. Read more
Published on June 21, 2002 by Dave Zeltserman
3.0 out of 5 stars
one of his weakest
Contrary to some of the other reviews, this is by no mean's Thompson's "sickest" or "most paranoid" - "Pop. Read more
Published on May 2, 2000
3.0 out of 5 stars
Jim Thompson's sickest?
SAVAGE NIGHT is easily the sickest Jim Thompson book I've yet read (I'm about halfway through his creepy canon). Read more
Published on March 12, 1999
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