Savage Night by Jim Thompson Review

Charlie “Little” Bigger arrives in the small town of Peardale in Long Island, posing as an older student enrolled at the local college, but is really there to whack a key witness in an upcoming mob trial. What’s a hitman to do in a small town? Apparently not much - including the very killing he’s been hired to do! Welcome to Snoozy Night by Jim Thompson.

The premise is an enticing one and the main character is delightfully grotesque - Charlie is a 5ft tall TB-riddled scumbag with rotten teeth and eyes, a physical reflection of the horrible crimes he’s committed - and yet out of such promising material the usually dependable Jim Thompson produces a veritable bore of a novel in Savage Night.

Thompson sets things up well to begin with - we get to know Charlie (or Carl Bigelow, as he calls himself to the Peardale townsfolk), and the cast of characters, including boozebag and Charlie’s target Jake Winroy, his floozy wife Fay, their deformed housemaid Ruthie, and upbeat lodger and owner of the local bakery Mr Kendall. And then once we establish that Charlie’s there to kill Jake… nothing happens for basically the entire book!

Charlie has to deflect suspicion as the new guy in town so he poses as the model citizen, attending classes and getting a job at Kendall’s bakery. He has affairs with Mrs Winroy and Ruthie on the sly. He meets his real employer, The Man, in New York once. A whole lotta nothin’ really! There’s little tension built up or any mystery to be revealed - we just follow Charlie through his mundane day-to-day. Considering Thompson is one of the few writers who actually lives up to the label of “thriller” writer, this is disappointing stuff.

When he went to New York, there was a briefly exciting scene as we got to see how deadly Charlie can be and what a nutjob he is like to be around - it’s just a shame that a scene like this stands alone and is surrounded by so much forgettable dross. The ending is interesting, the prose is decent, but there’s not enough here to recommend Savage Night, even to fans of Jim Thompson. He’s written far better novels like Pop. 1280 and A Hell of a Woman that I’d recommend picking up over this, if you haven’t read those before - Savage Night is a savagely dull read.