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Sneaky People
The time is the 1930s. Buddy Sandifer, dressed in his natty white flannels, baby-blue shirt, striped tie, tan-and-white shoes, and coconut-straw hat with polka-dot band, is falling into one of his moods. Owner of a used-car lot and father of a fifteen-year-old son with a penchant for sex manuals, Buddy has decided to murder his wife and marry his mistress, Laverne, a robust blonde who cooks his favorite meal of fried pork chops, fried potatoes, and fried apples while wearing a short pink apron over black-lace step-ins and brassiere, long-gartered silk stockings, and platform shoes. The only problem is how to arrange the crime.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
26 people are currently reading
666 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Berger
243 books140 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Thomas Louis Berger was an American novelist, probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man, which was adapted into a film by Arthur Penn. Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure.
Berger's use of humor and his often biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, though he rejected that classification.
Thomas Louis Berger was an American novelist, probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man, which was adapted into a film by Arthur Penn. Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure.
Berger's use of humor and his often biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, though he rejected that classification.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
July 27, 2014
Thomas Berger died on July 13, 2014. I had no idea, until a friend of mine and fellow-Berger-admirer emailed me. That it wasn’t a national story (like the deaths of other writers) is part of what keeps Berger’s fans in a state of constant disbelief. I had stumbled upon Sneaky People for the first time in the early 1990s. It was the first of Berger’s novels I had read and it led me to the rest of them, all 20 or so, my teaching a number of them at Rutgers, and a long correspondence with the great man. That I was rereading Sneaky People at the time of his death—and that a post-it on my computer reminded me to “write Berger”—are details that, had they appeared in novels, one might have dismissed as too cute and coincidental. But they’re true. Over time, Berger has sent me inscribed copies of his books and long replies to my letters, ones that included genuine conversation, as opposed to “Thank you for your inquiry,” etc.
Sneaky People is as good a place as any to begin with Berger. Published in 1975 but set in Berger’s beloved Midwest of the 1930s, it tells of used-car salesman Buddy Sandifer’s plan to have his wife killed so he can enjoy the fruits of is mistress without her constantly nagging him. Buddy is the worst of the lot, but there is plenty of sneakiness to go around. This is one of those books that, the less you know about it before picking it up, the better. There’s a laugh on every other page. Certain readers of the FDA-approval-camp should be warned that there are no delicacies here, and if you delight in being “offended” by the bad behavior of fictional creations, you should pick up something else.
Few contemporary writers are as good as Berger at having the narrator match the sensibilities and assumptions of the characters. Berger was so good at this; the vulgarity of his characters’ minds is reflected perfectly in the prose. His trademark pitch-perfect sentences appear on every other page. And Chapter 11, a thirty-page set piece detailing how Buddy’s mistress became a whore and the rest of her awful life, might be the best thing he ever wrote. As a short story, it could stand beside work by Cheever, Hemingway, or O’Connor.
David Mamet has a good essay about how much he enjoyed O’Brien’s Aubrey Martin series and how he sat down to write him a letter to tell him as much—when his wife showed him O’Brien’s obituary. Mamet told his wife, “This fellow has created characters and stories that are part of my life.” The same holds true for Berger and his readers. Even his lesser works (Best Friends, Suspects, Changing the Past) are never dull, and he only wrote two certifiable duds (Nowhere and Regiment of Women) out of 23. The triumphs of The Feud, Arthur Rex, Neighbors, Rinehart in Love more than make up for them. Thomas Berger, Great American Writer, R.I.P.
Sneaky People is as good a place as any to begin with Berger. Published in 1975 but set in Berger’s beloved Midwest of the 1930s, it tells of used-car salesman Buddy Sandifer’s plan to have his wife killed so he can enjoy the fruits of is mistress without her constantly nagging him. Buddy is the worst of the lot, but there is plenty of sneakiness to go around. This is one of those books that, the less you know about it before picking it up, the better. There’s a laugh on every other page. Certain readers of the FDA-approval-camp should be warned that there are no delicacies here, and if you delight in being “offended” by the bad behavior of fictional creations, you should pick up something else.
Few contemporary writers are as good as Berger at having the narrator match the sensibilities and assumptions of the characters. Berger was so good at this; the vulgarity of his characters’ minds is reflected perfectly in the prose. His trademark pitch-perfect sentences appear on every other page. And Chapter 11, a thirty-page set piece detailing how Buddy’s mistress became a whore and the rest of her awful life, might be the best thing he ever wrote. As a short story, it could stand beside work by Cheever, Hemingway, or O’Connor.
David Mamet has a good essay about how much he enjoyed O’Brien’s Aubrey Martin series and how he sat down to write him a letter to tell him as much—when his wife showed him O’Brien’s obituary. Mamet told his wife, “This fellow has created characters and stories that are part of my life.” The same holds true for Berger and his readers. Even his lesser works (Best Friends, Suspects, Changing the Past) are never dull, and he only wrote two certifiable duds (Nowhere and Regiment of Women) out of 23. The triumphs of The Feud, Arthur Rex, Neighbors, Rinehart in Love more than make up for them. Thomas Berger, Great American Writer, R.I.P.
August 3, 2014
An entertaining and genuinely humorous tale of infidelity and murder set in the 1930s, filled with "sneaky people", doing all the little dirty deeds people are prone to do, deeds that spin out of control, as these things are prone to do, in an engaging comedy of "dark" errors.
Berger doesn't whitewash the language or the social strata, letting us witness both the quaint and the downright ugly with an even hand. Things were what they were, and he tells the tale as it was with refreshing honesty and candor.
Berger doesn't whitewash the language or the social strata, letting us witness both the quaint and the downright ugly with an even hand. Things were what they were, and he tells the tale as it was with refreshing honesty and candor.
February 25, 2015
I flat out like Thomas Berger. He's a terrific writer with a built-in sense of social satire. I consider this his best.
The problem with Berger is that he's so prolific. He can't help himself--he has to write--and as a result some of his concoctions are so outlandish--invisible people, men who become women, accidental detectives--that it can test the credulity of a reader, who, if he or she is like me, will nonetheless suffer through the premises because there's always something brilliant to find. What's less forgivable are the books about downright nasty people, which I begin and soon put aside.
But this book, like The Feud, has Berger's socially redeeming teenagers living in a world of idiot or absurdly obsessive adults, which leavens the nastiness and turns dislikability into enjoyable, edifying farce.
The problem with Berger is that he's so prolific. He can't help himself--he has to write--and as a result some of his concoctions are so outlandish--invisible people, men who become women, accidental detectives--that it can test the credulity of a reader, who, if he or she is like me, will nonetheless suffer through the premises because there's always something brilliant to find. What's less forgivable are the books about downright nasty people, which I begin and soon put aside.
But this book, like The Feud, has Berger's socially redeeming teenagers living in a world of idiot or absurdly obsessive adults, which leavens the nastiness and turns dislikability into enjoyable, edifying farce.
July 10, 2017
My book club pretty much hated this book, and the cries of outrage when they saw that I gave it a thumbs-up (to their six thumbs-down) were full-throated and incredulous. I was not surprised, as I had predicted their displeasure to another friend before we ever got to our group discussion, but it is instructive to try and understand why my position (more specifically, about 3.5 out of 5 stars here) is different to theirs, and what it says about the perils of reading any piece of fiction without access to its historical moment or the intentions of the author.
While to my fellow members the name of author Thomas Berger meant nothing, I was more aware of his place as a writer of some renown, his most famous novel of course being Little Big Man, which was turned into a fairly major motion picture directed by Arthur Penn and starring Dustin Hoffman back in 1970. Berger wrote around two dozen novels (one, The Feud, which the 1984 Pulitzer Prize fiction committee recommended be awarded that year’s top prize), two of which I had read before Sneaky People: Reinhart’s Women (the fourth in a series about the agreeable yet hapless everyman, Carl Reinhart), and the sublimely dark comedy, Neighbors. It was Neighbors that exposed to me Berger’s penchant for gallows humor in the suburbs, and a dry and corroding wit that both lacerated, and treated with affection, the soldiers in the ongoing battle for civility and morality in a social milieu rife with both venomous greed and callous disregard for the basics of propriety.
With this primer, I came to Sneaky People with an appreciation for Berger’s disarming style, and his ability to ably steer a narrative towards a moral reckoning that his characters are helpless to affect. Sneaky People, written 5 years before Neighbors, can almost be seen as a trial run for the latter book in some respects, as both novels depict a main protagonist who is at an emotional remove from the members of his own nuclear family, and either cannot or willfully will not understand their real natures. It was Earl’s journey in Neighbors to see his family more clearly, and Buddy has a similar intellectual journey in Sneaky People, though both men’s paths to discovery are interrupted by rather serendipitous and fateful occurrences: it’s in this omniscient plotting that the sardonic humor of Thomas Berger can be found at its most unmerciful (if not wholly compassionate).
But Buddy is not the only character in the novel, and almost all of the characters of note are indeed behaving sneakily: Clarence, the black man who works for Buddy at his car dealership, ends up absconding with money without performing an agreed-upon service; Leo, another of Buddy’s employees, steals money Buddy has set aside to pay Clarence to kill his wife, Naomi; Buddy’s mistress, Laverne, has grown tired of Buddy and plans her big break…to a convent; and unbeknownst to her family, Naomi leads a rich and fulfilling life as a writer of pornographic short stories. Berger believes, as Jean Renoir did, that “everyone has their reasons,” and his novel is a cataloguing of his various characters’ motivations for acting as they do.
The sadism of the author is that he is the one pulling the strings, and it’s his decision that Buddy’s self-actualization will only begin to come about after his rashly devised plans for murdering two people are thoroughly hijacked by the unpredictability of a world over which he has no control. If Berger gives many of these characters some ultimate moments of grace as the novel reaches its end, it is only because he also gets to provide some ultimate comeuppance in the form of a robe, a belt and a basement staircase. In Berger’s caustic universe, a moral reckoning can only be forestalled for so long.
So perhaps my club co-members weren’t aware how to “read” this book, not knowing the author’s penchant for social satire, and not considering that there was a Saharan wit behind the machinations of the plot. Some were definitely put off by the vulgarity of the uneducated characters’ lack of class. Maybe they didn’t take into account the time in which the story took place (80 years ago), and the time when the story was written (40 years ago), and the huge social differences that drove the motivations of the various people who inhabited its pages. But my friends are pretty bright, so it’s not a question of not getting it, but more of taking the novel at face value, of not looking for the puppeteer pulling the strings (always a dicey proposition, especially in these modern times when the “unreliable narrator” has become, by default, the only kind of narrator). Readers these days are not encouraged to contend with an authorial voice, with a writer who has something to say, and perhaps, ultimately, this is the delight one can find in an old-fashioned author like Thomas Berger: he created moral universes, and through his fiction taught us lessons in the ethical treatment of our fellow human beings. If occasionally he pulled the spare wing off the random fly, so be it.
While to my fellow members the name of author Thomas Berger meant nothing, I was more aware of his place as a writer of some renown, his most famous novel of course being Little Big Man, which was turned into a fairly major motion picture directed by Arthur Penn and starring Dustin Hoffman back in 1970. Berger wrote around two dozen novels (one, The Feud, which the 1984 Pulitzer Prize fiction committee recommended be awarded that year’s top prize), two of which I had read before Sneaky People: Reinhart’s Women (the fourth in a series about the agreeable yet hapless everyman, Carl Reinhart), and the sublimely dark comedy, Neighbors. It was Neighbors that exposed to me Berger’s penchant for gallows humor in the suburbs, and a dry and corroding wit that both lacerated, and treated with affection, the soldiers in the ongoing battle for civility and morality in a social milieu rife with both venomous greed and callous disregard for the basics of propriety.
With this primer, I came to Sneaky People with an appreciation for Berger’s disarming style, and his ability to ably steer a narrative towards a moral reckoning that his characters are helpless to affect. Sneaky People, written 5 years before Neighbors, can almost be seen as a trial run for the latter book in some respects, as both novels depict a main protagonist who is at an emotional remove from the members of his own nuclear family, and either cannot or willfully will not understand their real natures. It was Earl’s journey in Neighbors to see his family more clearly, and Buddy has a similar intellectual journey in Sneaky People, though both men’s paths to discovery are interrupted by rather serendipitous and fateful occurrences: it’s in this omniscient plotting that the sardonic humor of Thomas Berger can be found at its most unmerciful (if not wholly compassionate).
But Buddy is not the only character in the novel, and almost all of the characters of note are indeed behaving sneakily: Clarence, the black man who works for Buddy at his car dealership, ends up absconding with money without performing an agreed-upon service; Leo, another of Buddy’s employees, steals money Buddy has set aside to pay Clarence to kill his wife, Naomi; Buddy’s mistress, Laverne, has grown tired of Buddy and plans her big break…to a convent; and unbeknownst to her family, Naomi leads a rich and fulfilling life as a writer of pornographic short stories. Berger believes, as Jean Renoir did, that “everyone has their reasons,” and his novel is a cataloguing of his various characters’ motivations for acting as they do.
The sadism of the author is that he is the one pulling the strings, and it’s his decision that Buddy’s self-actualization will only begin to come about after his rashly devised plans for murdering two people are thoroughly hijacked by the unpredictability of a world over which he has no control. If Berger gives many of these characters some ultimate moments of grace as the novel reaches its end, it is only because he also gets to provide some ultimate comeuppance in the form of a robe, a belt and a basement staircase. In Berger’s caustic universe, a moral reckoning can only be forestalled for so long.
So perhaps my club co-members weren’t aware how to “read” this book, not knowing the author’s penchant for social satire, and not considering that there was a Saharan wit behind the machinations of the plot. Some were definitely put off by the vulgarity of the uneducated characters’ lack of class. Maybe they didn’t take into account the time in which the story took place (80 years ago), and the time when the story was written (40 years ago), and the huge social differences that drove the motivations of the various people who inhabited its pages. But my friends are pretty bright, so it’s not a question of not getting it, but more of taking the novel at face value, of not looking for the puppeteer pulling the strings (always a dicey proposition, especially in these modern times when the “unreliable narrator” has become, by default, the only kind of narrator). Readers these days are not encouraged to contend with an authorial voice, with a writer who has something to say, and perhaps, ultimately, this is the delight one can find in an old-fashioned author like Thomas Berger: he created moral universes, and through his fiction taught us lessons in the ethical treatment of our fellow human beings. If occasionally he pulled the spare wing off the random fly, so be it.
April 6, 2017
Back in the 1960s, when I began reading in earnest beyond the boundaries of textbooks and science fiction, novels characterized by critics as “black humor” were popular, and I ate them up. (That’s black as in dark or cynical, gallows humor, not African-American.) This was the heyday of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Bruce Jay Friedman, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, and, sometimes, Philip Roth. Thomas Berger, the late author of Little Big Man, graduated into this school of writing, too. Sneaky People was one of his efforts at black humor.
Sneaky People, published in 1975, is a good novel because it was written by a consummate pro with an admirable command of the English language and because it so faithfully evokes life in America in the closing years of the Depression — not because it’s funny. I’m sure some readers found it so, but I was taken much more with the descriptions of Depression-era lifestyles: the rampant racism and anti-Semitism, the sexual repression, and especially the frequent references to the cost of everyday purchases (a hamburger for fifteen cents, fifty cents to pay the teenager down the block to cut your lawn, a good pair of shoes for twelve dollars, eighty-five cents for a carton of cigarettes, and, I’m sure, a good five-cent cigar). Sneaky People is a historical novel, and a good one.
Here’s the setup: Buddy Sandifer, who has both the ethics of a used-car salesman and owns a lot full of them to prove it, is a flashy dresser with a wife he has decided to kill, a busty mistress (a prostitute) he plans to marry, and a fifteen-year-old son named Ralph. Buddy can’t keep his pecker in its place, and Ralph has inherited his preoccupation with sex. When Buddy offers the “colored” handyman at his used-car lot two hundred dollars to murder his wife, his troubles really begin. Meanwhile, Ralph is getting himself mixed up in trouble of his own, dragged into law-breaking by his brutish friend, “Horse” (Horace). As both tales creep forward in alternating chapters, they gradually move closer to each other and ultimately intertwine in a multi-part conclusion that’s full of surprises.
To stretch a point, you could call Sneaky People a crime novel, but it most certainly doesn’t make the grade as a mystery or thriller. I picked it up because some self-important and probably delusional book critic listed it among the 100 best mysteries and thrillers of all time: if this book fits his definition of that genre, I can only imagine what else he might have included on the list. (I can’t remember: maybe I’ve repressed it.)
Sneaky People, published in 1975, is a good novel because it was written by a consummate pro with an admirable command of the English language and because it so faithfully evokes life in America in the closing years of the Depression — not because it’s funny. I’m sure some readers found it so, but I was taken much more with the descriptions of Depression-era lifestyles: the rampant racism and anti-Semitism, the sexual repression, and especially the frequent references to the cost of everyday purchases (a hamburger for fifteen cents, fifty cents to pay the teenager down the block to cut your lawn, a good pair of shoes for twelve dollars, eighty-five cents for a carton of cigarettes, and, I’m sure, a good five-cent cigar). Sneaky People is a historical novel, and a good one.
Here’s the setup: Buddy Sandifer, who has both the ethics of a used-car salesman and owns a lot full of them to prove it, is a flashy dresser with a wife he has decided to kill, a busty mistress (a prostitute) he plans to marry, and a fifteen-year-old son named Ralph. Buddy can’t keep his pecker in its place, and Ralph has inherited his preoccupation with sex. When Buddy offers the “colored” handyman at his used-car lot two hundred dollars to murder his wife, his troubles really begin. Meanwhile, Ralph is getting himself mixed up in trouble of his own, dragged into law-breaking by his brutish friend, “Horse” (Horace). As both tales creep forward in alternating chapters, they gradually move closer to each other and ultimately intertwine in a multi-part conclusion that’s full of surprises.
To stretch a point, you could call Sneaky People a crime novel, but it most certainly doesn’t make the grade as a mystery or thriller. I picked it up because some self-important and probably delusional book critic listed it among the 100 best mysteries and thrillers of all time: if this book fits his definition of that genre, I can only imagine what else he might have included on the list. (I can’t remember: maybe I’ve repressed it.)
October 19, 2012
Teriffic! American irony. Should be a film with Jack Nicholson....
February 5, 2020
Coming of age tale mixed in with a crime drama with lots of humor and scandalous sexual scenes. Set in a small mid-western town during the Great Depression, so be wary of racial disparaging remarks (every ethnicity gets poked at in this novel) and sexism (although the women depicted are quite strong characters). I've been wanting to read this novel, solely because of the title and knew nothing about the author--I'm so glad that I delved in with no expectations as this book was a pleasant surprise.
April 19, 2017
I had high hopes for this given the rave reviews. I guess something is lost on me here. In the 70ish pages I read I encountered more racial slurs and puerile attempts at humor than I might encounter in a bargain bin Pulp Fiction knockoff. Nothing struck me as amusing and i found myself not caring about the story or characters at all.
Read
June 29, 2019like the feud, this novel is thunderously, breathtakingly anticlimactic... also like the feud, it's nevertheless worth peeping for the way it takes a wrecking ball to nostalgia for the era of soda jerks and big band music. a cri du coeur sorta against good ol'-fashioned american pettiness & ugliness. as such it's worth reiterating here that if you like e.g. steelwork or aberration of starlight by gilbert sorrentino you need to read this and the feud without delay. and vice versa!!
February 18, 2017
I enjoyed the author's use of the English language in this book. His writing was not as simplistic as many books of more recent vintage.
September 11, 2015
What a disappointment. I can't say I hated it, but I certainly wouldn't have finished it had it not been chosen for a mystery book group I intended to join. It's so crude as to qualify as soft-core porn. I realize it's intended as satire but it just plain fails at that. I haven't been to this discussion group before but I'll be very interested to see how this book got chosen. If future books are like this one, I won't be staying. I don't think of myself as easily offended, but this book managed to offend me pretty much all the way through.
The book is set in the 1930s somewhere in Bigotsville, USA. Racist terms abound along with the F-bombs and graphic descriptions of the crudest teenage boy sex fantasies. The characters are all cartoons and repulsive ones at that, except for a few pitiable ones. There were a couple of amusing scenes near the end, but that's as close to a plot as I was able to find. There is no mystery, no murder, no action scene, no detective, and no ending to peak of. I turned the last page expecting to find that the last few pages must have been ripped out since the story just came to an abrupt halt. I suppose Berger just ran out of metaphors for erections and gave up.
The book is set in the 1930s somewhere in Bigotsville, USA. Racist terms abound along with the F-bombs and graphic descriptions of the crudest teenage boy sex fantasies. The characters are all cartoons and repulsive ones at that, except for a few pitiable ones. There were a couple of amusing scenes near the end, but that's as close to a plot as I was able to find. There is no mystery, no murder, no action scene, no detective, and no ending to peak of. I turned the last page expecting to find that the last few pages must have been ripped out since the story just came to an abrupt halt. I suppose Berger just ran out of metaphors for erections and gave up.
January 17, 2015
This is an extremely funny novel that is strangely very warm and a wonderful snapshot of humanity and all that entails. At the same time, it is a hard-boiled noir mystery novel. This book was written in 1975, but the book is set in the 1930's. Berger's characterizations are extremely well-crafted. That is what makes this book so special. The main characters are Buddy Sandifer who is a fairly successful used car salesman who owns a thriving business in a small town. There is Buddy's fifteen year old son Ralph and is wife Naomi. Then of course there is the wonderful Laverne who is Buddy's mistress. Buddy is a rough and ready guy, but he is a warm and wonderful person in spite of the way he carries on with Laverne. The book is slyly funny and perfectly plotted. Berger was an author of some skill and a master of minimalist writing. I enjoyed the book and it would actually make a great movie.
March 5, 2013
Perfectly paced, great characters, and as the title says, sneaky people. This book could've gone on an on for twice its length and kept me hooked, but it didn't, and it ended brilliantly.
September 17, 2018
This is first I have heard of Thomas Berger--I came across him and this work on a best crime stories list, and, boy, am I glad I did.
What is Sneaky People?
It is a crime story centering on a bevy of richly drawn characters that, despite their baser instincts, try every so often to do what is right. It is a gleefully raunchy and laugh out loud funny sex farce about how men and women endeavor to get the upper hand in relationships. It is a 30s set pastiche with dialogue that practically sings it is so beautifully and particularly written. It is, most surprisingly, an honest and tender coming-of-age story. And it just might be the best work never made by the Coen Brothers.
Seriously, are you not sold?
What is Sneaky People?
It is a crime story centering on a bevy of richly drawn characters that, despite their baser instincts, try every so often to do what is right. It is a gleefully raunchy and laugh out loud funny sex farce about how men and women endeavor to get the upper hand in relationships. It is a 30s set pastiche with dialogue that practically sings it is so beautifully and particularly written. It is, most surprisingly, an honest and tender coming-of-age story. And it just might be the best work never made by the Coen Brothers.
Seriously, are you not sold?
January 12, 2024
...yielding yet immanently dominant, massive but lyrical extrusions...
Underrated novel set in 1930s small town USA with a handful of fleshed-out, complex, and quite humanly-flawed characters.
Racist and sexist dialogue throughout, although these are anything but exaggerated based on a layman's understanding of 1930s small town USA sociology; character motivation and narration of internal voice is enlightened-feminist relative to mainstream 1980s sensibilities. A bit of softly pornographic content, particularly towards the denouement.
Berger was a brilliant storyteller, every bit on par with Vonnegut, Ballard, Wolfe and other successful innovators of that generation.
Underrated novel set in 1930s small town USA with a handful of fleshed-out, complex, and quite humanly-flawed characters.
Racist and sexist dialogue throughout, although these are anything but exaggerated based on a layman's understanding of 1930s small town USA sociology; character motivation and narration of internal voice is enlightened-feminist relative to mainstream 1980s sensibilities. A bit of softly pornographic content, particularly towards the denouement.
Berger was a brilliant storyteller, every bit on par with Vonnegut, Ballard, Wolfe and other successful innovators of that generation.
February 11, 2018
I love this perfectly-titled book, which to a large extent is about how we perceive each other. Each character carries secrets unknown even to family members. Husbands and wives assume they know their spouses, but have no idea of what is really going on within them, under the surface. A mysterious peripheral character named Ballbacher, who appears only occasionally, seems to respond to other characters according to their essential purity, severe with the scrofulous, benign with the innocent. A vivid, unpredictable and often hilarious reminder that there is much more to all of us than meets the eye.
February 5, 2021
Set in small-town America c.1939, this has a cast connected through car-lot owner Buddy Sandifer who wants to hire someone to kill his mousy wife so he can marry his mistress, Laverne. There are some superbly-drawn characters such as his 15 year-old son Ralph and his (Ralph’s) social circle plus Buddy’s employees, many of whom prove to be rather different than at first impression. They all feature as Buddy’s plans over the week don’t quite work out. This is a novel you wanted to get back to, where attitudes, people and the setting feel totally authentic.
February 7, 2024
I do not know how this book got on my "to read" list. The characters are : used car salesman, his wife, his son, his mistress, his employees. There are sexual acts and perversions and sexually explicit language. The ending is unusual. You know what will happen even though the book ends before.
March 25, 2025
Very good. Except for the weird punctuation. The entire text lacks single or double quotes, and some other punctuation. It was a bit distracting. And the end wasn't as good as I was hoping for, but it was an enjoyable read otherwise.
January 22, 2018
I like Berger, but there were too many racial epithets in the first 20 pages.
April 13, 2018
Thomas Barber's
December 2, 2022
Read this for my Mystery Book Group. Didn't find it entertaining or amusing. Terrible language, pointless story. Not recommended.
July 28, 2019
For those who, like me, couldn't place the name at first, Thomas Berger is probably best known as the author of Little Big Man (which is the only novel of his I recognized), but who is in actuality quite prolific and has written novels and stories in a variety of genres spanning five decades. After hearing an offhand recommendation for his work, I decided to hunt up one of his books, and SNEAKY PEOPLE, originally published in 1975, was the first one I was able to lay a hand on.
SNEAKY PEOPLE is the story of Buddy Sandifer, used-car salesman, and his family, mistresses and co-workers. Though no date is ever given, it would seem that the action takes place either in the late thirties or early forties, and concerns the weaving together of the lives of this small knot of people - specifically how they present one side of themselves to their friends and family, but an entirely different one when circumstances change. The title of the book, then, would presumably refer to how the characters are forced to conceal their true wants and desires, and the efforts they make in order to fulfill the needs of their hidden personalities.
The exception would be Buddy's son, Ralph, who, as a teenager on the cusp of adulthood, is uncorrupted by this duality. He is, in fact, a stand-up guy - completely naïve to the duplicity around him, though by novel's end, the implication is that the shell he's lived in is about to be violently cracked. Exactly what Mr. Berger meant to convey by the situation is probably best left up to each reader to determine for themselves, though I don't think it too much of a spoiler to say that, in making the transition from child to adult, Ralph represents the sad fact that we usually find the world is quite different than how we imagined it.
Sneaky People is well-written, comic sometimes, and sprinkled with clever descriptions of its characters. It also depicts--probably quite truthfully--the institutional racism of the times. Readers bred on a steady diet of PC literature may be surprised at the frank depiction of ingrained bigotry--I was. Yet it is powerful--uncomfortable and thought-provoking in a way books written with a politically correct slant simply cannot be. Although it entails only a tiny portion of the book, it is probably for this that I will remember it most.
As for the bulk of the novel, I felt ambivalent about it more than anything else. It doesn't put me off Mr. Berger--I'm sure I'll read more at some point. But there seems to be a surplus of well-written comic novels about the foibles of 20th Century Americans; Cheever, Updike, Heller, and the Richards Ford, Russo and Yates--all of whom are extremely talented at dissecting the American character, and all of whom I fail to connect with on anything but the most superficial level. SNEAKY PEOPLE was the same--an entertaining story, but little to excite my imagination.
SNEAKY PEOPLE is the story of Buddy Sandifer, used-car salesman, and his family, mistresses and co-workers. Though no date is ever given, it would seem that the action takes place either in the late thirties or early forties, and concerns the weaving together of the lives of this small knot of people - specifically how they present one side of themselves to their friends and family, but an entirely different one when circumstances change. The title of the book, then, would presumably refer to how the characters are forced to conceal their true wants and desires, and the efforts they make in order to fulfill the needs of their hidden personalities.
The exception would be Buddy's son, Ralph, who, as a teenager on the cusp of adulthood, is uncorrupted by this duality. He is, in fact, a stand-up guy - completely naïve to the duplicity around him, though by novel's end, the implication is that the shell he's lived in is about to be violently cracked. Exactly what Mr. Berger meant to convey by the situation is probably best left up to each reader to determine for themselves, though I don't think it too much of a spoiler to say that, in making the transition from child to adult, Ralph represents the sad fact that we usually find the world is quite different than how we imagined it.
Sneaky People is well-written, comic sometimes, and sprinkled with clever descriptions of its characters. It also depicts--probably quite truthfully--the institutional racism of the times. Readers bred on a steady diet of PC literature may be surprised at the frank depiction of ingrained bigotry--I was. Yet it is powerful--uncomfortable and thought-provoking in a way books written with a politically correct slant simply cannot be. Although it entails only a tiny portion of the book, it is probably for this that I will remember it most.
As for the bulk of the novel, I felt ambivalent about it more than anything else. It doesn't put me off Mr. Berger--I'm sure I'll read more at some point. But there seems to be a surplus of well-written comic novels about the foibles of 20th Century Americans; Cheever, Updike, Heller, and the Richards Ford, Russo and Yates--all of whom are extremely talented at dissecting the American character, and all of whom I fail to connect with on anything but the most superficial level. SNEAKY PEOPLE was the same--an entertaining story, but little to excite my imagination.
May 18, 2014
Sneaky People by Thomas Berger is the story of how used car dealer Buddy Sandifer sets out to have his wife murdered so that he can set-up home with his long-term mistress, Laverne. The book starts with this premise, but after a while it becomes clear that the homicide plot is a mere side show. What we actually have here is a fairly visceral story of 1950s mid-town Americans and their secret lives and fantasies.
Berger is a literate writer who skilfully uses his prose to explore the secret underside of these middle class characters; he lifts a veil and we learn how each one of them has reached the point of their own personal desperation. Buddy, his son Ralph, and mistress Laverne take centre stage for most of the book, but the peripheral characters are also well drawn and engaging, particularly Buddy's wife, Naomi. I liked the intimate details of their lives, and it's this element, so deftly handled, that provides the driver for the story. So much so, that it moves away from the premise of 'how's he going to get away with having his wife killed', to one that gives us an understanding of how these people ended up occupying such an emotionally dysfunctional place.
The book was written in the 1970s and is set 20 plus years earlier, so there's quite a bit of casual and not-so-casual racism, sexism and white superiority, which at times was a bit hard to stomach. But it's important to read it as product of its time, and as well as being a good read, reminds us of how much things have changed.
I'm not sure how widely available Berger's books are now - I got my copy from a library sale - but I would be keen to read more of this gifted writer's work.
© Koplowitz 2014
Berger is a literate writer who skilfully uses his prose to explore the secret underside of these middle class characters; he lifts a veil and we learn how each one of them has reached the point of their own personal desperation. Buddy, his son Ralph, and mistress Laverne take centre stage for most of the book, but the peripheral characters are also well drawn and engaging, particularly Buddy's wife, Naomi. I liked the intimate details of their lives, and it's this element, so deftly handled, that provides the driver for the story. So much so, that it moves away from the premise of 'how's he going to get away with having his wife killed', to one that gives us an understanding of how these people ended up occupying such an emotionally dysfunctional place.
The book was written in the 1970s and is set 20 plus years earlier, so there's quite a bit of casual and not-so-casual racism, sexism and white superiority, which at times was a bit hard to stomach. But it's important to read it as product of its time, and as well as being a good read, reminds us of how much things have changed.
I'm not sure how widely available Berger's books are now - I got my copy from a library sale - but I would be keen to read more of this gifted writer's work.
© Koplowitz 2014
January 2, 2014
There are a number of things going on in this entertaining novel, much of them occurring behind a screen erected by Berger's use of a (very) limited third-person narration. The reader may assume, at first, that this narrator is omniscient (and in some instances this is the case), and this only adds to the clever conceit of the narrative: not only are all of the characters "sneaky people," in that they are all hiding things from others and from themselves, but ultimately the text itself is "sneaky." The narration focuses only on point-of-view characters in each section or chapter, knowing what they know and seeing things as they see them (which often is distinctly different than what those things actually are). Thus it takes the reader most of the novel to begin piecing information from each of the characters together to understand what Berger and the novel are up to.I don't want to get into any spoilers, so I think I'll leave it at that, other than to say that the characters and situations are well-drawn and entertaining (sometimes even touching), and that it is a joy to discover, after several chapters have elapsed that a character who appeared to be a certain type of person is, once we can read something from his or her perspective, actually someone quite different. Ultimately, this is somewhat less satisfying than other novels by Berger, but it is an engaging and entertaining work nevertheless.
September 7, 2014
I came across mention of this novel in one of those Best Ever Crime and Mystery lists. I enjoy unearthing new authors and gave it a try.
This is definitely not a cosy mystery. Nor is it a conventional murder mystery solved by a clever detective. The anti-hero, Buddy Sandifer, is an arrogant hypocrite whose casual racism and sexism is jaw-dropping by modern standards. However Buddy lives in the 1930’s. Buddy is having an affair. Divorce in 1930’s America ain't so easy, and Buddy therefore decides to murder his long-suffering wife. On the face of it, this novel is about the events which follow.
However, as its title suggests, Sneaky People is actually a tale of calculations and miscalculations, jumping to a conclusion and getting it wrong. Pretty much no one in our tale is the person anybody else thinks they are; and it gets harder and harder to know who is pulling the wool over whose eyes.
It's crude and coarse in places, but it's also comic and compelling. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.
Nina Jon is the author of the newly released Magpie Murders.
She is also the author of the Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection crime and mystery series, about private detective Jane Hetherington.
This is definitely not a cosy mystery. Nor is it a conventional murder mystery solved by a clever detective. The anti-hero, Buddy Sandifer, is an arrogant hypocrite whose casual racism and sexism is jaw-dropping by modern standards. However Buddy lives in the 1930’s. Buddy is having an affair. Divorce in 1930’s America ain't so easy, and Buddy therefore decides to murder his long-suffering wife. On the face of it, this novel is about the events which follow.
However, as its title suggests, Sneaky People is actually a tale of calculations and miscalculations, jumping to a conclusion and getting it wrong. Pretty much no one in our tale is the person anybody else thinks they are; and it gets harder and harder to know who is pulling the wool over whose eyes.
It's crude and coarse in places, but it's also comic and compelling. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.
Nina Jon is the author of the newly released Magpie Murders.
She is also the author of the Jane Hetherington's Adventures in Detection crime and mystery series, about private detective Jane Hetherington.
January 9, 2011
I have a suspicion (a sneaking one?) that Joel and Ethan Coen have read this book somewhere alone the line. There's a definite affinity between the sensibilities/obsessions of their movies and the particulars of this book. I'm talking: folksy dialogue with an ear for both the baroque and the vernacular (Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where Are Thou? etc); a car salesman with a sinister, self-serving plot involving his wife (Fargo); provincial antique setting (O Brother again, probably also The Man Who Wasn't There); numerous twists and turns in the plot, often ending with major characters meeting their demises in senseless, darkly comical ways (Burn After Reading, Blood Simple, etc); and so on.
But there's also a lot going on here with regards to sex and secrecy, which are the driving forces of the plot. The title, as simple as it is, says quite a bit, and I was delighted at each new occurrence of another character sneakin' around for whatever reason. There are lots of good dirty jokes and moments of erotic comedy, but a real heart underneath it all. I enjoyed this one a lot.
But there's also a lot going on here with regards to sex and secrecy, which are the driving forces of the plot. The title, as simple as it is, says quite a bit, and I was delighted at each new occurrence of another character sneakin' around for whatever reason. There are lots of good dirty jokes and moments of erotic comedy, but a real heart underneath it all. I enjoyed this one a lot.
August 28, 2018
This reads like a Coen Brothers script before the Coen Brothers: slangy, louche dialogue, a half-assed murder conspiracy, and more than one double-cross in the works.
Though the action is compressed into three days, the novel still feels shapeless. Once the plot is underway, unexpected things happen in a way that not only upsets the characters' expectations, but also seems to unravel the threads of the story. There are major shifts in the point-of-view characters in the second half of the novel and a long chapter in flashback that dissipates the plot's momentum.
Berger does have his characters' speech patterns nailed and nicely individualizes them.
Previous: Regiment of Women
Next: Who is Teddy Villanova?
Though the action is compressed into three days, the novel still feels shapeless. Once the plot is underway, unexpected things happen in a way that not only upsets the characters' expectations, but also seems to unravel the threads of the story. There are major shifts in the point-of-view characters in the second half of the novel and a long chapter in flashback that dissipates the plot's momentum.
Berger does have his characters' speech patterns nailed and nicely individualizes them.
Previous: Regiment of Women
Next: Who is Teddy Villanova?
June 26, 2014
This review is unfair to Thomas Berger’s Sneaky People, as it is a function of my genre expectations rather than the actual quality of the book. I like Thomas Berger, and when I read a passing reference to Sneaky People as his “noir” novel set in the 1930s, I bought a copy immediately. The plot gets rolling when Buddy Sandifer, owner of a used car lot, puts out a hit on his wife. That sounds noir enough, and the book certainly has its dark moments, but Sneaky People is a sex comedy, and I am the victim of bad intel. I kept waiting for the novel to be something that it never became. If I had encountered Sneaky People in a different context (“Hey, you’ve got to read this hilarious Thomas Berger novel!”), I doubtless would have liked it more. If I could call a do-over and read this book again for the first time, I would.
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