Whisper Town - Judson Phillips

I was sorting out my bookshelves (more a cull than a rearrangement) and found several books I didn't know I had, of which this was one.  I have no idea when I acquired it and, having now read it, I'm pretty sure I didn't read it at the time of acquisition.

What a treasure!  Phillips 1903-1985 wrote mystery thrillers for sixty years.  Under his real name, and the pseudonym Hugh Pentecost, he is said to have turned out a hundred novels.  If they're all as good as Whisper Town, he is ripe for rediscovery.

This is classic American noir - a small town where everyone knows everyone else but each only knows a little of the other's secrets.  It starts with an accident, a drunk-drive hit-and-run, but becomes a witch-hunt into the teacher behind the high school's sex education programme, then it becomes a murder.  It all takes place over a single week.  Every element is fully resolved, but the device by which Philips delivers the final denouement is breathtaking - every bit as good as the twist in Nesbo's Headhunters.  I really should have spotted it, especially as the character has my mother's maiden name, which is also my stage name, but I didn't and I like to think that is because of Phillip's mastery of his craft rather than me not paying proper attention.

The writing itself is an object lesson of how these things should be done.  No frills, no affectations, yet every sentence and every phrase refined to deliver the ultimate impact.  As an example, check out the last half-page of Part One, page 70 in this edition.

I'm happy to say I also have another Phillips novel I didn't know I had, which I shall be reading imminently.  But then what shall I do?  I'm afraid - lightened bookshelves notwithstanding - I shall have to acquire more.  I owe it to myself.

The Killer Inside Me - Jim Thompson

Thompson (1906-77) was the king of American pulp noir.  Nobody of his era did it nastier and he can still shock today.  The Killer Inside Me is probably his best novel, though I quite liked King Blood when I read it twenty or so years ago.  He takes great liberties with first person narrative, yet he gets away with it thanks to sheer bravura.

That is not to say Thompson was in any sense a poor or sloppy writer.  Let us not forget, as so many do, that he wrote the scripts of Kubrick's The Killing and Paths of Glory.  The Getaway and The Killer Inside Me have both made into Hollywood movies twice, The Grifters once.  Several others have been adapted as French movies.  Maybe it's the resolutely humdrum name, but Thompson really should be much better known than he is.

What we have here is the account of Lou Ford, Hicksville TX deputy, good old boy and psycho killer.  There are all sorts of reasons why they can't catch him.  Mainly, he's much smarter than they think he is.  Secondly, he simply doesn't care whether they catch him or not.  He's not to blame.  It's the sickness (italicised throughout), which first troubled him as a boy.  In the end, by unexpected literary sleight of hand, they do catch him.  Lou still doesn't care.  He has already prepared the final spree - for himself and others: "All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad."  A sentence that pretty well defines the form.