The Getaway

Description

The story of a bank robbery and its aftermath, of cross and double-cross, told with the unflinching eye of America's greatest crime writer. When it comes to pulling off the perfect bank job, Doc McCoy wrote the book. But with a partner like Rudy Torrento, who is not only treacherous but insane, and a wife who is still an amateur, McCoy has forgotten something: when the crime is big and bloody enough, there is no such thing as a clean getaway.

Jim Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma. After an itinerant childhood during which his sheriff father was driven from office for embezzlement; and as a roughneck in the Texan oil fields of the 1920s, Thompson became successful as a writer with the pulp fiction houses of the 1950s, writing a dozen of his more enduring novels in just 19 months. He also wrote two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory).

I don't read many books twice but Jim Thompson novels - due to their concise, dirty power, their relentless violence and purity - can always draw me in for a second time. Some of the most psychological crime writing ever done. I love James M Cain and Elmore Leonard but Jim Thompson holds a special place in my heart. -- Bruce Springsteen