THE GRIFTERS by Jim Thompson

Finished Sa 5/16/15

This is the novel that I took with me to Arizona where I spent a week at the La Quinta from Tuesday 5/5 thru Tuesday 5/12/2015.

Characters-

Roy Dillon- Accomplished young grifter and specializes in the 'short con'. He is actually a smart man, and seems to come to the realization that he really could make it in the straight world. The dark novel is kind of a 'trajectory' of this slowly processed revelation.

Lilly Dillon- Roy's mother, although she had him when she was very young and treated him more as a brother or even lover. This 'queasy' relationship is the heart of the novel and gives it the warped dimension. Her boss is a particularly nasty character, and when Lilly screws up a deal (her job is to infuse lots of mob cash into bets at the horse track), he tortures her by burning a cigarette into her hand.

Moira Langtry- Roy's girlfriend who even looks like Lilly.

Lilly runs money for the mob, but wants out. She devises a scheme in which she kills Moira and makes it look like a suicide. And, makes the phony suicide look like Lilly is the one who took her own life, but she is the one who surprised Moira and shot her in her bed.

In the final scene Lilly visits Roy to steal his stash of cash behind three ugly paintings and ends up killing Roy. Before he's shot, Roy argues that he's trying to make a go of the straight life and that she should give it a try herself. No way-
     "Well, kid, it's only  one throat...."

When Roy was injured after a con (punched in the gut with a club when he tried a grift involving a 'short-change'), Lilly hires a young nurse to take care of him. Carol is a Jew and a survivor of  a Nazi concentration camp. Roy has honest emotional feelings for this girl, but when she tells him of her background, it turns him off. He doesn't want to hear it, and many of his comments seem to make you realize that he is very much an anti semite.

There are plenty of disturbing emotional points to the novel, but I found Roy's aversion to Carol (the love of his life) the most unsettling.

All Jim Thompson novels are worth a look.