A review by paul_cornelius
The Getaway by Jim Thompson

5.0

I suppose I am like many others who came to this novel after seeing the film. The Steve McQueen version, I should emphasize. What is remarkable is that both film and novel are masterful in their own, separate and distinctly different ways. It is the last part of Thompson's book that is so different and so abstract as to divert the reader from the film completely. Its description of Doc and Carol on the run and their hideaway among Ma and Earl makes for one of the most harrowing and claustrophobic passages in contemporary literature. But then Thompson does himself one better with the final chapter, where Doc and Carol make their "getaway" to El Rey, which turns out to be the world's most sophisticated and luxurious charnel house. No other work in this genre turns on its protagonists so utterly and viciously. At novel's end, metaphor and reality merge in an indecipherable way. This book is a masterpiece.