I’ve read a number of Jim Thompson’s excellent crime noir novels, but for some reason I’d never gotten around to reading The Grifters. I saw the movie when it came out (screenplay by Donald Westlake!) and enjoyed it, so when I found the book at a free book exchange in Rio Verde, Arizona a couple of weeks ago, I grabbed it. It’s an extremely bleak story, but it’s also enthralling.
The story focuses on Roy Dillon, a short con artist in Los Angeles. He’s in his early 20s and maintains an impeccable appearance. People like him. He keeps a pair of loaded dice in his pocket to rip off drunk sailors, and he knows how to trick bartenders and shopkeepers into giving him $20 in change instead of the dime he’s owed. He’s amassed a small fortune this way, and he keeps a straight job as a door-to-door salesman so no one can get suspicious.
Roy’s mother, Lilly, is only about 15 years older than her son, and she works for a creepy mobster who keeps her on a short leash. Roy hasn’t seen his mother for years, because she was a rotten mother and Roy doesn’t want anything to do with her. But when a dimestore clerk punches Roy in the gut with a sawed off baseball bat and sends him to the hospital, mother and son are reunited and the relationship takes a new turn.
That’s just the beginning of this hardboiled, noir story. I was fascinated by Roy’s life — Thompson does a great job of following Roy around as he goes about his daily business, struggling with urges to drop the grifter life and become an honest man, but always falling back into his role as a short con artist. Roy’s sort-of girlfriend, Moira Langrty, is just as interesting. She’s a former long con artist who relies on her stunning good looks and rapidly-shrinking treasure to pay the bills. She’s becoming increasingly aware that her beauty is fading, and that she needs to come up with a plan to set herself up for the rest of her life. Lilly takes an immediate dislike to Moira, and cooks up a scheme to drive her and Roy apart.
If you’ve seen the movie, you know how it ends, but don’t let it stop you from reading the novel, because Thompson’s writing is terrific.