Chuck wrote:
> Just read The Grifters.
>
> Read quickly enough although I kept wondering who the book was
> really about.
>
> I’m wondering, though, if I’m alone in thinking the ending lacked
> proper foundation(s).
>
> The Killer Inside Me was “pretty darn good.”
>
> The Grifters reminds me more of a novel written to reach the word
> count required by a publishing contract. Once he got the “magic
> number” of words, he bailed out.
>
> Was the movie any better?
Yep. Donald Westlake wrote the screenplay, which certainly helped.
Jim once stirred the pot here by daring to suggest that Ross Macdonald
was a more consistent writer than Chandler. Well, Thompson's output
was far more erratic and inconsistent than Chandler's. Some great
peaks, but also also some real valleys, seems to be the general
consensus. His alcoholism definitely had a negative effect on his work.
His reevaluation and subsequent cult following dates almost
exclusively from the eighties reprints by Black Lizard books, and as
more and more of his work resurfaced, it soon became clear it wasn't
all golden.
It's been posited by more than one observer of the mystery scene that
Thompson went from being one of the genre's most underrated writers to
one of the most overrated.
Too late for him to enjoy, of course, but the bitter black joke might
have been one he'd have understood.
Kevin Burton Smith
Thrilling Detective Web Site
New Issue Any Millennium now...
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