Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
34th out of 308 books
—
201 voters
The Getaway
by
Jim Thompson
Doc McCoy knows everything there is to know about pulling off the perfect bank job. But there are some things he has forgotten--such as a partner who is not only treacherous but insane and a wife who is still an amateur. Worst of all, McCoy has forgotten that when the crime is big and bloody enough, there is no such thing as a clean getaway.
Paperback, 192 pages
Published
October 3rd 1990
by Vintage
(first published 1958)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
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 s...more
Doc McCoy, Rudy "Piehead" Torrento, and an accomplice rob the Beacon City Bank and immediately begin double crossing each other. Can Doc McCoy and his wife make it to Mexico before Torrento takes them down or the police catch them?
The Getaway it the tale of a bank heist and its aftermath, told in Jim Thompson's bleak style. Actually, it's really light compared to the other four Thompson's I've read up to this point, more akin to Richard Stark's Parker series than The Killer Inside me. Doc McCoy...more
The Getaway it the tale of a bank heist and its aftermath, told in Jim Thompson's bleak style. Actually, it's really light compared to the other four Thompson's I've read up to this point, more akin to Richard Stark's Parker series than The Killer Inside me. Doc McCoy...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
More than just a running from the law and the evil criminals, too type-book, but a surreal analogy of how much crap a married couple can endure. And speaking of crap, the capper is when they're reduced to hiding out under a ton of horse manure for hours. Yeah, sometimes marriage feels a lot like that!
As the book develops, husband and wife become increasingly more paranoid and distrustful of each other until they can barely look at each other in the eye. So, forget the Steve McQueen and Alec Bald...more
As the book develops, husband and wife become increasingly more paranoid and distrustful of each other until they can barely look at each other in the eye. So, forget the Steve McQueen and Alec Bald...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
I came across this book whilst browsing the 2nd hand bookstall on Cambridge market a few months ago and parted with £1.50... unfortunately I have to say that this was not money well spent. I had read many of Jim Thompson's other works, particularly enjoying "The Grifters", "A Hell of a Woman" and "After dark, My Sweet" and was hoping that this would be another gem from the noir master but I was very disappointed. It is just a badly-written book. The plotting, which starts off promisingly, with a...more
"Doc McCoy había nacido con la obligación de ser un individuo endiablado: persuasivo, lleno de personalidad, insidioso, agradable, de buen carácter e imperturbable. Uno de los individuos más agradables que uno puede encontrarse", así es el perverso a la vez que encantador personaje de "La huida" del gran escritor de novela negra Jim ...Thompson, que se une a la galería de un escritor que dibuja personalidades diabólicas de una manera magistral. No es Nick Corey (de 1280 almas), ninguno lo puede...more
I love the book, fast, well-written, surprising to the end. I am very happy to have been chosen for the new French translation (this one will be unabridged and as faithfull as possible to the American text).
To do so, I need your help on one specific point.
In the middle of chapter 9, Doc is in the train with the robber he has just killed and Carol. Here comes the conductor. This all has to do with conductors in the 50s in America ! The text goes ("he" being the conductor) :
"He jabbed a train chec...more
To do so, I need your help on one specific point.
In the middle of chapter 9, Doc is in the train with the robber he has just killed and Carol. Here comes the conductor. This all has to do with conductors in the 50s in America ! The text goes ("he" being the conductor) :
"He jabbed a train chec...more
I read this in an omnibus edition, but I want to review them singly.
I've never really cared for the Sam Peckinpah film of this, though I think that's just down to mostly not caring much for Sam Peckinpah films. In fact, I rather preferred the trashy 1994 remake, which was, if nothing else, a good deal pacier. It is interesting, though, that the film versions of Doc McCoy, seem to respectively reflect the then current notions of what made a good bad guy: Steve McQueen's cool icy glare and Alec Ba...more
I've never really cared for the Sam Peckinpah film of this, though I think that's just down to mostly not caring much for Sam Peckinpah films. In fact, I rather preferred the trashy 1994 remake, which was, if nothing else, a good deal pacier. It is interesting, though, that the film versions of Doc McCoy, seem to respectively reflect the then current notions of what made a good bad guy: Steve McQueen's cool icy glare and Alec Ba...more
I actually really enjoyed this book, despite how plot-heavy it is and how crime fiction usually isn't my thing (that's one of the reasons I am taking this class, after all, to broaden my horizons). The story just kept on moving, and Thompson did a great job weaving psychology and character development into the plot, which did a lot to build tension around fairly typical (for the genre) developments. There's a lot of betrayals and double-crosses going on, but at the heart, this is a story about a...more
***slightly spoilery***
The Getaway is my third Thompson book and the least satisfying. While The Grifters and The Killer Inside had coherent plots and seemed self-aware of their own sometimes over-the-top hard-boiled edge, The Getaway is a sloppy exercise in episodic, piecemeal violence.
Doc and Carol are bank robbers on the run from a job gone bad, and every scrape leads to dead bodies. It's almost comedic, except I never got the sense I was supposed to laugh. There is one effectivively terrify...more
The Getaway is my third Thompson book and the least satisfying. While The Grifters and The Killer Inside had coherent plots and seemed self-aware of their own sometimes over-the-top hard-boiled edge, The Getaway is a sloppy exercise in episodic, piecemeal violence.
Doc and Carol are bank robbers on the run from a job gone bad, and every scrape leads to dead bodies. It's almost comedic, except I never got the sense I was supposed to laugh. There is one effectivively terrify...more
One of my favorite books ever - this books is dark, bleak, and uncompromising in its overview of a world of criminals so damaged by an utter lack of trust that any kind of true peace or caring relationship is possible. The characters are fascinating, in a grim and horrible sort of way, as you watch the last of their humanity bleed away from them as the encounter one trauma after another in their attempt to escape a bank job and a prison break by crossing the Mexican border. Of particular note is...more
Quite a fractured narrative that jumps around, often overlapping starts and ends which is a little confusing at times. A few jumps in logic i found hard to follow. At one point the wife pretends to break up with the husband in jail so she can convince the judge to let him out early. I have no idea why she had to fake the break up. There's a few of those kinds of odd narrative leaps.
It is a sharp, tough book, with driven characters none of whom are particularly likeable, not even the leads. They...more
It is a sharp, tough book, with driven characters none of whom are particularly likeable, not even the leads. They...more
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 st...more
Although there was a short stretch where he produced five novels a year, Thompson still takes some literary chances that none of the other noir writers took. The final chapter of The Getaway adds an explicit and extended level of surrealistic existentialism to the genre unlike any other I've encountered. Thompson has several other interesting novelties and oddities in his work that might not be so apparent, but of the two or three books I've read of his, none have grabbed me like Chandler, MacDo...more
So close to a four star (or better) book, hamstrung by the final chapter. For most of the book, Thompson crafts a great crime novel that calls to mind the Parker books that Westlake would eventually write. Unfortunately, all of the subtlety and atmosphere that was developed in the early chapters is completely thrown out in the last chapters once the protagonists have reached their goal.
If I could have stopped before the last chapters, it would have been a four star book. The characters are inte...more
If I could have stopped before the last chapters, it would have been a four star book. The characters are inte...more
This is a fast-paced, well-written, intriguing crime story detailing - as you might expect from the title - a getaway from a bank robbery. There are plenty of twists and turns and a couple of real surprises. Despite the frequent violence the two main characters become quite endearing - you want them to succeed against the odds. As good as this is, the book's final chapters take a further twist which could have made an entire story in their own right, and add a new dimension to their perceived go...more
A journey through the twists and turns of a bank heist gone wrong and a relationship that might go wrong too. This novel starts off as almost a standard crime drama but then takes a turn into the noir side. The relationship between Doc and Carol McCoy forces the reader to examine the relationship and focus on the underlying tensions; what is not being said. This story is deeper and more complex that the chase movie starring Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw. The ending is something right out of The T...more
I came away from The Getaway with mixed feelings. Like many Thompson novels, it has moments of brilliance. And, of course, there is something utterly wonderful about Doc McCoy. He is a classic Thompsonian tragic figure (sans alcohol), a self-deluded but very capable sociopath. I would describe the book as halfway between The Night of the Hunter and Bonnie and Clyde, with a pinch of The Asphalt Jungle included mostly to motivate the action. However, there is something inconsistent about the book...more
3.4 stars for sure. i was confused by the ending, the last 15 pages in el rey, as if this part were written before the rest of the book and made to fit to jibe with the rest. it was a disappointing climax, anti-climatic. however, up until then it was a face paced bare knuckle brawl of a crim novel and jim thompson scored again. even though i felt it was rushed, the themes held true and the violence was startling. only read one jim thompson book i would not recommend and that is the rip-off. stil...more
A hell of a writer - this may be my favorite Thompson so far. Our heroes give a good chase but when time and circumstance have caught up, they come straight out of the Twilight Zone. Peckinpah took a pretty good stab at it but I can see why they changed the ending for film (and the version with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger sounds dreadful). Perhaps the Coen Bros. could do it, maybe even bring on David Lynch as guest director for the denouement. But enough fantasy casting - if you like noir/crim...more
Jim Thompson is being "rediscovered" as one of the top pulp fiction crime writers of his era. The word "Pulp" does not do Jim Thompson justice, however, as his work actually is a step or two above what is commonly thought of as pulp.
In The Getaway Doc McCoy, fresh out of prison, organizes a bank robbery which goes bad. Doc's partner goes screwy and his wife Carol, a former good girl gone bad, is willing but not very experienced. In a world of dark, shady and desperate characters where pretty muc...more
In The Getaway Doc McCoy, fresh out of prison, organizes a bank robbery which goes bad. Doc's partner goes screwy and his wife Carol, a former good girl gone bad, is willing but not very experienced. In a world of dark, shady and desperate characters where pretty muc...more
A desperate-criminals-on-the-run novel, with Doc McCoy and his wife Carol being particularly violent although strangely likeable bank robbers. As is so often the case with criminal masterminds, Doc’s carefully thought-out and brilliantly planned getaway becomes a series of mistakes, bungles, and casual murders. Thompson tells his story with style, the plot has endless twists and the tension builds relentlessly as Doc and Carol appear to be running out of luck. The ending is deliciously ironic an...more
This book would need a more precise star system. It deserves 86 or 88% , so 4.40something stars. It's unlike anything I've ever read before. It's plot-driven to the extreme, the situations are strong, unique and twisted, yet the characters are fleshed out extraordinairily. It's only 180 pages, but it couldn't be any bigger or it would've been too complicated. It's cops n' robbers again, but who cares? Thompson wrote The Getaway in 1959, so everybody else copied him. That's the original and that'...more
I'd actually give thi 4.5 stars. For the first 70-80 pp. it reads like a solid if unremarkable example of post-WWII hardboiled fiction. Then it begins to pick up in pace, and for the last 3rd Thompson pushes further into expressionism and an exploration of the interior worlds of the two main characters. The last chapter seems to divide readers - I have to count myself as one who considers it the part of the book that makes it a masterpiece of crime fiction.
THE GETAWAY is undoubtedly one of Jim Thompson's best known pieces of work. It's made it through two Hollywood adaptations, neither of which come close to resembling the novel in either feel or content. Thompson, quite often, sets his stories within a clearly defined genre with understood expectations only to push against them from the outset. The conflict created in the story of Doc, Carol and Rudy is not the conflict you would expect and ultimately becomes more of an internal conflict within t...more
This is one of the better Jim Thompson noirs I've read. It's a twisty chase novel with the expected double-crosses, close calls, and violent clashes. Then toward the end, the story veers into something else but in an intriguing way. Doc McCoy, the bank robber, is a nice guy psychopath. I've read and heard that Thompson wrote fast and didn't revise his output. If so, he did a bang up job with his first drafts because he's delivered the goods.
Terrific - just terrific. Jim Thompson puts Sartre in the shithouse. But pulp novels never get the credit some long-dead French guy's stuff get. But don't mistake it. This is a real existentialist nightmare, and you don't even realize it til the last third of the novel. What Thompson does to you is the same thing Dostoevsky excelled in doing - making you feel physically ill about what happens to imaginary people.
Jim Thompson is one of the great "popular" fiction writers of the late 20th Century, and this is one of his best. A fast-paced story with frequent twists and surprises, the reader finds his/herself captivated by criminals and the other characters that populate the story. Thompson's work is never uplifting, and The Getaway follows suit, though it isn't the unhappy ending one is so certain of while reading.
Fast moving and action-packed, the low-starred rating really is a reminder for me to re-read this. Not because I didn't like it, but rather because I feel I missed a lot of pertinent information whilst I was swept up in the action. And, as a further postscript, I made it through 10 minutes of the film; I was that disappointed. Sometimes the book ruins the movie!
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| translation problem | 3 | 15 | Apr 17, 2012 08:01am | |
| translation problem | 1 | 5 | Mar 29, 2012 02:46am |
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
James Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction.
Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the lat...more
More about Jim Thompson...
James Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction.
Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the lat...more
Share This Book
1 trivia question
More quizzes & trivia...
“Flight is many things. Something clean and swift, like a bird skimming across the sky. Or something filthy and crawling; a series of crablike movements through figurative and literal slime, a process of creeping ahead, jumping sideways, running backward.
It is sleeping in fields and river bottoms. It is bellying for miles along an irrigation ditch. It is back roads, spur railroad lines, the tailgate of a wildcat truck, a stolen car and a dead couple in lovers' lane. It is food pilfered from freight cars, garments taken from clotheslines; robbery and murder, sweat and blood. The complex made simple by the alchemy of necessity”
—
7 people liked it
It is sleeping in fields and river bottoms. It is bellying for miles along an irrigation ditch. It is back roads, spur railroad lines, the tailgate of a wildcat truck, a stolen car and a dead couple in lovers' lane. It is food pilfered from freight cars, garments taken from clotheslines; robbery and murder, sweat and blood. The complex made simple by the alchemy of necessity”
“Then he laughed and she laughed. And quivering with the movement of the train, the dead man seemed to laugh too.”
—
5 people liked it
More quotes…
Jan 06, 2013 05:44pm
Jan 06, 2013 06:10pm