Wow, just wow!
I picked this up as part of the "Criminal Masterworks" range of books (my mainstay of books alongside "Hard Case Crime") along with a plethora of others and decided, completely at random, to read it next. I had no prior knowledge of the story nor author, so my expectations were completely neutral.
And they were surpassed somewhat.
This is such an elegantly, humanly constructed story. Everyone is real and yet interesting and different. It is so rich with character and detail that is effortlessly woven together so that nothing is contrived, yet nor is it surplus.
The thing that makes this book so special is the tension. The film adaptation tells you all you need to know with its title of "No Way Out". I can not remember another book that tightened the net around a protagonist so title I felt like I myself was being throttled. I found myself actually despairing at the perceptibly inevitable miscarriage of justice and truth. And with this being noir it was just as easy to end badly for the protagonist as it was to end well. So right up until the last few pages I did not know which way the coin would land...
It is a relatively short book that gives great character and plot and I would recommend it to anyone who likes noir...
No comments:
Post a Comment