Customer Reviews

Savage Night

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The main character has a mission and it isn't hard to figure out what it is. His victim is a damn drunk and his friends are out to get him. Meanwhile his body deteriorates steadily providing some of the most hideous impressions of the outside world. He knows that someone is out to get him but he doesn't know who and as the narrative unravels you have trouble figuring out what is real.One of the most bizarre stories in Jim THompson's body of work. Also one of the best

Jim Thompson is one of America's great hardboiled/noir writers, and there will never be another writer like him. It's impossible, his background and experiences were just too varied. He wrote some terrific books, and this is my favorite of them. Savage Night follows Carl Bigelow, a pint-sized hitman who is literally falling apart. The ending is as psychotic and outrageous as they come. This should be a must read for anyone interested in american pulp/hardboiled literature. I respect Jim Thompson immensely, and hope that my own books live up to the standards he set...

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 "tank town" ninety-five miles from New York City. The five-foot, tubercular Carl is in bad shape: he wears eye contacts, shoe lifts, and false teeth. He takes a room in a boarding house and attends the local teachers' college. Actually Carl has been sent by "The Man", a shadowy crime boss in NYC, to take out Jake Winroy, a key witness to testify in a corrupt politicians case. Carl quickly puts the moves on Ruthie, the stuttering housekeeper with an odd leg deformity, and Fay, Jake's greedy and earthy wife. Carl works in a bakery adding plaster of Paris in its dough. His schmoozing with the local sheriff's matronly wife is laugh-out-loud funny. The nightmarish ending is a jolt. SAVAGE NIGHT moves fast and is a one-sitting read. It offers a multiple appeal to the fans of American gothic, hardboiled prose, and psychological suspense.

SAVAGE NIGHT is easily the sickest Jim Thompson book I've yet read (I'm about halfway through his creepy canon). I won't divulge any plot points, but a couple of moments made me shudder - and I live in New York!

While sick and certainly involving, SAVAGE NIGHT falls short of vintage Thompson (ie, THE GETAWAY). Still, nobody writes of the twisted and the doomed quite like Jim Thompson, and for that I bless his memory and recommend SAVAGE NIGHT.

This, one of Jim Thompson's best, follows his usual loose formula: anti-hero is hiding his true self from everyone else, is surrounded by stupid people (at least from his point of view), commits crimes, and, well, the ending is almost de rigeur for Jim Thompson. The difference is how utterly strange and engaging it is.

This is the Jim Thompson novel I've read the most because it still is puzzling, and interesting. Actually, in feel, this is reminiscent to the ending of Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers. Again, a novel about miserable people.

All in all, this is a great book. I don't think it's his best, but it's certainly one of his most interesting. A good analogy would be that I love the movie Three Amigos, but it doesn't rank up with Citizen Kane.

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. Savage Night is definitely not in the same class but it is a curious read nonetheless.

Savage Night is a story of how a thug/fugitive enters into the lives of those living in a small college town. He is certainly a brutal character without any redeeming values (..the sort of characters often found in Thompson novels). The story meanders a bit ... in fact there isn't that much of a story at all (some talk about doing a big crime, some hanky-panky with a married woman, a suspicious sheriff, etc). But the most curious feature of Savage Night are the strange and memorable characters, most of whom are very dysfunctional and nasty.

I suppose my only disappointment with Savage Night is with what the other amazon.com reviewers consider to be an asset: its absolutely shocking ending...

Bottom line: weird almost to the extent of being surreal. But certainly memorable.

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 missing from most ordinary lives. But the characterization slips here and there, and at the denouement is, frankly, unbelievable. For the noir reader, if not any literate reader who can appreciate the complexity this writer conveys through simplicity, Savage Night is certainly worth reading. But Thompson has written better books.I Think, Therefore Who Am I?