A Swell-Looking Babe (Crime Masterworks S.)
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Product Description
Product Description
The Manton looks like a respectable hotel. Dusty Rhodes looks like a selfless young man working as a bellhop. And the woman in 1004 looks like an angel. But sometimes looks can kill, as Jim Thompson demonstrates in this vision of the crime novel as gothic.
About the Author
Jim Thompson (1906-1977) was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma. As well as his much-praised novels, he wrote two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory). Pop. 1280 was an acclaimed French film under the title Coup de Torchon.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was a strange book. Gripping from the start, never a dull moment, and then a quiet and rather unsatisfactory ending.
If Thompson was a modern author, instead of 140 pages, the book would have had 400. Thompson's style is lean. The main characters get their personalities from the dialogue, and not from complicated thought. No padding. Great twists and turns. It's not surprising that Thompson is revered by the best crime authors of today. What is surprising is that the majority of his books are out-of-print!
If Thompson was a modern author, instead of 140 pages, the book would have had 400. Thompson's style is lean. The main characters get their personalities from the dialogue, and not from complicated thought. No padding. Great twists and turns. It's not surprising that Thompson is revered by the best crime authors of today. What is surprising is that the majority of his books are out-of-print!
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A Swell Looking Babe ranks with Thompson's best, but it is much different than many of the novels for which he is famous. The narrator is a bellboy who hates his father. Unlike many other Thompson 1st-person barrages, he is not crazy, however. He can't hold a candle to Lou Ford, in other words. What makes this novel interesting, however, is the character of the hotel; it has a personality of its own.
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Loosely based on Jim's life as a bell hop coupled to the guilt he faced looking after his father as he entered senility.
Then throw in some dark noir sexual lust, including a highly sensitive and nuanced protrayal of incest then this begins to catch fire. The town big wig is not he appears or perhaps comes true to form. Everyone is playing a handle.
In between the bell hop finds lust and a magnetic attraction. Then the vice is squeezed to see what pops out the other end.
The plot is a rollercoaster ride through deceit, lies and love. Flashbacks to early life and the effect on the present echo through the empty lobbies. Conscience similarly to Dostovesky rears its head and this becomes the tension in the plot. Whilst all is noir goodness also oozes in the form of love. It battles itself out with power and humiliation to gain access to the daylight.
Money is the key to hell and money in the novel tumble into the pit. Signing your name for freedom is another sure fire way to end up burnt. All flows downwards as morality takes a back seat in the struggle of all against all where brutality calls the shots. Jim depicted the Oklahoman worlds of the small town where everyone knows and the eyes glare into the back of the head. The writing is terse, brutal and pushes the novel forwards with its psychological paintings of the main characters.
You can learn more about people from Thompson than reading the complete tomes of Freud. Whereas the latter strode off to into the lands of Greece, Thompson stay rooted in this world.
The sexual frission in early life is part of the key to the unfolding later events. This plays out in Dusty Rhodes inner voice. It's not the psychotic critical parent of the Sherrif. This is the feeling of being burdened and seeking love in an impersonal world. A fixation that is always at a cross roads between sin and absolution.
Thinking the worst of everyone eventually brings about the situation the paranoic as trying to escape from. Jim captures the double binds of everyday life like no other writer. He is more psychologist than fiction.
Then throw in some dark noir sexual lust, including a highly sensitive and nuanced protrayal of incest then this begins to catch fire. The town big wig is not he appears or perhaps comes true to form. Everyone is playing a handle.
In between the bell hop finds lust and a magnetic attraction. Then the vice is squeezed to see what pops out the other end.
The plot is a rollercoaster ride through deceit, lies and love. Flashbacks to early life and the effect on the present echo through the empty lobbies. Conscience similarly to Dostovesky rears its head and this becomes the tension in the plot. Whilst all is noir goodness also oozes in the form of love. It battles itself out with power and humiliation to gain access to the daylight.
Money is the key to hell and money in the novel tumble into the pit. Signing your name for freedom is another sure fire way to end up burnt. All flows downwards as morality takes a back seat in the struggle of all against all where brutality calls the shots. Jim depicted the Oklahoman worlds of the small town where everyone knows and the eyes glare into the back of the head. The writing is terse, brutal and pushes the novel forwards with its psychological paintings of the main characters.
You can learn more about people from Thompson than reading the complete tomes of Freud. Whereas the latter strode off to into the lands of Greece, Thompson stay rooted in this world.
The sexual frission in early life is part of the key to the unfolding later events. This plays out in Dusty Rhodes inner voice. It's not the psychotic critical parent of the Sherrif. This is the feeling of being burdened and seeking love in an impersonal world. A fixation that is always at a cross roads between sin and absolution.
Thinking the worst of everyone eventually brings about the situation the paranoic as trying to escape from. Jim captures the double binds of everyday life like no other writer. He is more psychologist than fiction.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
excellent, totally gripping
The best one of Thompson's I've read. More true to life than some of the others, since much of it is based on his own adolescent experience. A real killer ending, too. Read more
Published on 22 Aug 1999
Not So Swell
So-so effort from the ace of pulp noir. Typical themes of a twisted loner with thwarted ambition, blackmail and a dark secret -- and a dollop of incest. Read more
Published on 24 July 1999
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