Savage Night

by Jim Thompson

Book Overview

Is Carl Bigelow a fresh-faced college kid looking for a room, or is he a poised hit man tracking down his victim? And if Carl is really two people, what about everyone around him? Savage Night is Thompson at his best, with plot reversals and nightmarish shifts of identity.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679733108
• ISBN13: 9780679733102
• Release Date: November 1991
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

1953 psycho noir sets the bar

It's ticklish to comment much on SAVAGE NIGHT without giving away the plot and ending. Carl Bigelow, an unreliable and offcenter narrator, is a hitman who shows up in Pearldale, a "tank town" ninety-five miles from New York City. The five-foot, tubercular Carl is in bad shape: he wears eye contacts, shoe lifts, and false teeth. He takes a room in a boarding house and attends the local teachers' college. Actually Carl has been sent by "The Man", a shadowy crime boss in NYC, to take out Jake Winroy, a key witness to testify in a corrupt politicians case. Carl quickly puts the moves on Ruthie, the stuttering housekeeper with an odd leg deformity, and Fay, Jake's greedy and earthy wife. Carl works in a bakery adding plaster of Paris in its dough. His schmoozing with the local sheriff's matronly wife is laugh-out-loud funny. The nightmarish ending is a jolt. SAVAGE NIGHT moves fast and is a one-sitting read. It offers a multiple appeal to the fans of American gothic, hardboiled prose, and psychological suspense.

Great hard-boiled noir novel

Jim Thompson is one of America's great hardboiled/noir writers, and there will never be another writer like him. It's impossible, his background and experiences were just too varied. He wrote some terrific books, and this is my favorite of them. Savage Night follows Carl Bigelow, a pint-sized hitman who is literally falling apart. The ending is as psychotic and outrageous as they come. This should be a must read for anyone interested in american pulp/hardboiled literature. I respect Jim Thompson immensely, and hope that my own books live up to the standards he set...

One of Thompson's best!

This is one of Thompson's best doomed novels. Carl Bigelow, like most of Jim Thompson's better protagonists is born broken. Unlike typical noir, there isn't some line that Carl Bigelow has crossed that has doomed him; he had no chance from birth. And unlike most of Thompson's protagonists, Bigger is physically a mess. There's just not much of him left. He needs his glasses, false teeth, toupe and platform shoes to make him somewhat of a whole man. And what with suffering from consumption, there's less of him all the time.The ending of this one is dizzying.Note. As he does in several of his works, Jim Thompson makes a subtle cameo in this one.

Thompson's Darkest Ending

Thompson was famous for his nihilistic endings, and it's hard to beat this one. His depiction of total insanity and the bloody violence he saw in endemic to the human condition will chill you to the bone. Forget Stephen King: Thompson is the most frightening American writer you will ever read.

Jim Thompson at his paranoid twisted best

The main character has a mission and it isn't hard to figure out what it is. His victim is a damn drunk and his friends are out to get him. Meanwhile his body deteriorates steadily providing some of the most hideous impressions of the outside world. He knows that someone is out to get him but he doesn't know who and as the narrative unravels you have trouble figuring out what is real.One of the most bizarre stories in Jim THompson's body of work. Also one of the best