There isn’t much of a story to Jim Thompson’s The Grifters and that’s mostly why I didn’t like it much. The main characters are an estranged mother and son, Lilly and Roy Dillon, who are both con artists, or “grifters”, who rip people off, and that’s about it. Roy’s seeing an older woman, Moira Langtry, who’s also a grifter on the sly and an occasional hooker.
I knew something was up when Thompson was a good third through his story and no-one had been killed yet. The Grifters definitely feels like his softest story, at least that I’ve read to date (although he does get around to killing a couple of characters by the end), which only makes it all the less entertaining to read.
I thought maybe Thompson was doing a character piece instead of his usual blood-soaked, driven narrative, but there wasn’t much to either Roy or Lilly. She’s an utterly shitty mother and he’s kinda dull. No great, complex character portraits, no core conflict that builds up to a payoff, no “big score”-type plot that I’d thought might feature in a story about thieves - no nothing unfortunately.
Thompson remains able to write memorable characters and all of the main characters stood out to me strongly. There are fleeting moments where a chapter would be genuinely compelling - like Moira and Carol’s backstories, or when Lilly’s gangster boss Bobo showed up suddenly. I’ve noticed as well that Thompson, unlike some writers who either have no geographic interest or set all their stories in the same place, sets all of his stories in a different place each time - this one’s set in Los Angeles, which hasn’t been done before (although I’ve only read 8 of his novels so there might be repeats due soon).
The other notable feature of Thompson’s storytelling is the way he always manages to stick the ending, often one of the toughest features of a novel and one few writers are any good at. And while the violent finale comes out of nowhere and feels unearned and unsatisfying, it’s interesting to note how he lets the “bad” character win in this one.
His criminal characters always get their comeuppance at the end and I wonder if that’s by choice or whether he wouldn’t get published if he didn’t come down on the side of justice. I vaguely recall there being a rule for American movies in the early 20th century not being allowed to glorify crime because the feds thought it would turn more kids into lawbreakers and perhaps that rule extended to novels of the ‘40s and ‘50s and that’s why Thompson’s crooks get theirs before the books close - except by now it’s the ‘60s (The Grifters was published in 1963) and the a-changin’ times allowed him to be more subversive?
Anyhoo - The Grifters is a very plodding, unengaging read, which is surprising to me as I thought Thompson had more awareness of when he needed to jumpstart a story if it was starting to put the reader to sleep. I really don’t know what he was going for with this one. It’s especially odd to me that this would be one of his more famous novels as well when it’s one of his weakest.
If you’ve not heard me proselytise about this superb author’s best novels before, Pop. 1280 and A Hell of a Woman are the ones to check out if you’re interested in Jim Thompson rather than the more famous, but far less fun, The Grifters.
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