I didn't believe a word of this and it's not like this was a first novel, it was his 19th, so I'm thinking that he was maybe drunk in charge of a typewriter or was just having a real bad month, or something. First off, I don't like characters called Doc. Even if they're doctors. This is a personal quirk, so I tried to disregard it. Second, if this Doc McCoy is such an all-round criminal mastermind – and that is the very term used on p 58 - groan! – how come he got caught and went down for a 20 stretch in the first place? Third, didn't he notice that his right-hand man for the bank heist was a drooling psycho who was quite likely to fuck up the whole caper? Fourth, I don't think a clan of "hill people, rebels and outlaws…people with a very real sense of honor" (the boss of which is a six-foot woman called Ma - of course she is!) would be old friends with this superior criminal mastermind at all since all he does is dishonourably rob, kill and smirk. I think Jim Thompson just couldn't be bothered and called up Central Noir Agencies in 1958 and said "Yeah, I need a brainy criminal, a tough guy with mental problems, a cute wifey type, you know, perky blonde, yeah, and a bunch of honourable hill people… how soon can you get them over here?"Fifth, every so often Jim Thompson likes to impart his knowledge of the underworld to the reader, so he will say things like :Doc prowled about the cabin, automatically inspecting it as he did any place that was strange to him. He was looking for nothing in particular. Simply looking. Most top-drawer criminals have this habit. Eyes must be rolled and a chorus of "you think, Jim, you think?" spring spontaneously from the lips of even the most well-disposed reader. Sixth, the last 20 pages of this absurd melodrama change gear so violently that I think the gear stick must have come right off. The spray-on tough realism of the first 120 pages is abandoned and now we get some kind of Kafkaesque dreamy symbolism all about ultimate justice or karma or sumpin. At this point my eyes were beyond rolling. They could roll no more.
"Flight is many things."One remembers the 1972 Hollywood movie with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw (the horrid 1994 remake is hardly worth mentioning). Sam Peckinpah's direction, tense plot, and the violent extended gunfight scene made the film into a classic that nowadays seems to be enjoying a renaissance of popularity. The film is based on Jim Thompson's "The Getaway" (1958), yet it would be hard to find a book and a movie based on it, which - except for some common elements of the plot - would be more different.Coolheaded, intelligent, and likeable criminal, Doc McCoy, is the mastermind of a bank robbery. While the Doc and his crew flawlessly pull off the elaborate heist, not all aspects of the getaway plan work as expected and the Doc's and his wife's flight with the loot to their promised safe haven in Mexico is filled with horrors. To me the best thing in the book is that it gives a totally unexpected answer to the question "Will Doc and his wife manage to escape justice?" The answer, neither "yes" nor "no", transcends this simplistic question. While literary and somewhat allegorical the denouement is very pleasing for its surprise factor.Other than the ending, I have to commend the well-constructed plot. The writing is economical yet notably dated: I am currently reading a novel written only four years later, which sounds contemporary, while Mr. Thompson's prose feels like it came from the 1930s. Also, only McCoy's character is drawn with any depth: all other protagonists are pure paper. The portrayal of women in the novel may be considered demeaning. The high violence content - the novel depicts numerous killings - is to be expected and feels natural.Two and a half stars
What do You think about The Getaway (2014)?
Contrary to what some say there's quite a few movies that are actually better than the book. Sometimes because the book is crap (The Green Mile, The Shining) or because the movie is so damn good (Jaws, Manhunter.) And of course sometimes the book's pretty cool too, it's just that the movie's better, The Exorcist comes to mind. The Getaway is like that. Both adaptations (1972, 1994) I thought were great and the book's not bad either. It's lean and short and mean with any and all sane characters in sight dropping dead within hours or minutes. It's also violent (and it suggests violence too, which is always great.) It's a nice suspenseful noir with a satisfying amount of twists and surprises. But it's not as tight as the genre commands, nor is the language as attractive as any of Raymond Chandler's which is for me the one to measure up against.
—Lucynell
The Getaway is one of my favorite books because of the suspense and the unique writing style of Jim Thompson. There was not a time in reading the book that I got bored of the story line or just got tired of reading the book. Jim Thompson never focused too much on one character or one point of view, which kept the rhythm of the story flowing. The story starts out with the main character, Doc McCoy, in a hotel across the street from a small town bank. You quickly learn that Doc is a very well liked man, that makes everyone feel unique, which helps him gain trust from everyone he meets. This is a very important quality for the job that Doc has, being a bank robber. The action starts early on with Doc's hired men making his last and biggest robbery. Everything is running smoothly until McCoy's getaway plan starts unraveling in front of his eyes. Doc's life is turned upside down and the reader soon feels like he is with Doc on the journey to escape. I enjoyed the different viewpoints of the characters, the sudden changes in the story, and the anticipation on what Doc will think of next. The only thing I was confused with was the ending, and I wish that Jim Thompson would have been more clear with the outcome. Overall I really liked this book and recommend it to anyone who enjoys an upbeat, and old fashioned writing style.
—Brian Fischer
When 'Doc' McCoy pulls off the bank heist that is supposed to set him up for his retirement, he didn't reckon with the lengths to which bad luck would go to mess up his getaway. Every time you think things couldn't get worse for Doc, a charming, crafty sociopath, and his wife, they do. Until finally things get really nasty in the end. I felt this one wasn't as tightly crafted as The Killer Inside Me, but there are passages of such breathtakingly bleak and beautiful prose and sequences of such stark, but never gratuitous, brutality that I have to focus on what works rather than what doesn't in rating this book. I watched Out Of The Past and then sat up and finished this book late last night; I definitely need some light relief now.
—Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
