The Getaway by Jim Thompson Review

Robbers successfully knock over a bank and make it away with the loot - but the getaway doesn’t go as smoothly. Will they make it across the border down Mexico way or die trying?

I only know of the Peckinpah/McQueen/McGraw movie by reputation (and to a lesser extent the Alec Balwin remake in the ‘90s) so I know that The Getaway is considered a classic of ‘70s cinema. And I’ve read Jim Thompson before so I know the man can write like the devil himself. So I was a bit disappointed that The Getaway was so inconsistently entertaining.

The biggest problem was the main characters. Doc McCoy and his wife Carol are so bland. Doc is your stereotypical “cool guy” character while Carol is just a dull woman - someone who is such a blank slate that her older husband has to impress his own personality onto the void of hers to give her even an ounce of character. They’re unremarkable and boring creations - and we have to spend the whole story with them!

But there is at least one great character here: Rudy Torrento, a deformed, completely insane psychopath that Doc double-crosses after the initial robbery and who vows revenge. He’s wonderfully batty - a pie-headed lunatic with a hare-trigger temper and an imaginary German doctor(!?) living in his head who can’t seem to be stopped. Rudy stole every scene he was in, which were too few and far between for my liking - Thompson is in his element when writing crazy killers.

The story itself is intermittently thrilling. The robbery at the start is good, as is the double-cross, then it’s all ebbs and flows until the final act. The narrative always grinds to a halt when we have to listen to Doc calm Carol down and the two witter on about nothing before something exciting happens like the parole officer scene and getting ripped off themselves on the train. As soon as one fun thing ends and we’re back to Doc and Carol talking, it’s too easy to put the book down and do anything else because you know the next few pages will suck (and they do!).

And that final act - it’s pretty bizarre. The best thing I can say about it is that it’s unpredictable and imaginative - it’s not the expected ending to a cops’n’robbers story. You’re thinking, either they get caught or they make it away - what you don’t expect is to wonder if they died at some point and we’re seeing a bonkers afterlife or dream sequence or something (although thinking a bit more of the symbolism of the scenes in that final act, it’s almost certainly the first thing). So kudos to Thompson for that moment of unbalancing the reader right at the very end.

I haven’t seen the movies so I can’t really recommend them over this novel, although I would recommend Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men instead of Jim Thompson’s The Getaway, which is basically the same story but told better. Not to say Thompson’s novel is a total wash - there are enough moments here and there to make the read worthwhile if you’re a fan of this writer - but he’s also written far more compelling material elsewhere, like Pop. 1280, that dwarf this novel on every level. Getaway and try either Pop. 1280 or No Country for Old Men instead.