Thieves Like Us (Film Ink Series)

Rating:
Summary: Details
Review: Noir fans sniffing around for something good enough to follow Cain, Chandler & Hammett shouldn't skim past this one if they like their noir fast, tough, and rocketing towards an unavoidable finale. Plenty of gunplay, dames with real sizzle, and a crisp delivery that has nothing fake or forced. You can tell the writer ran with 'thieves like us', and is giving us an ringside seat at an imaginary slugfest across Texas. First released in 1937, the plot delivers the goods, but it's the period details that help make this one a keeper. Let me recommend a bargain hunters tip. Rather than buy this novel 'alone', look here on Amazon for "American Crime Novels of the 1930's and 1940s' edited by Horace McCoy. It includes unabridged versions of 'Thieves Like Us' as well as 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' and 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' and 3 other classics. A great buy when you consider the number of novels in one hardbound volume. Don't be a chump, Ixnay on the olitairesay, go for the whole enchilada.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant proto-hardboiled novel
Review: Written in 1937, Thieves Like Us--while not the first hardboiled novel (that honor goes to the work of Dashiell Hammett, hands down)--is nevertheless one of the great hardboiled classics. Basis for two films--Nicholas Ray's 1948 They Live By Night and Robert Altman's 1974 film of the same name--it tells of working class joes during the Depression who make a living by robbing banks, talking about it as white-collar slobs would a day at the office. Only with a lot more slang, spice, and color.

The writing is brisk, fresh, and succinct. Anderson is great at capturing the feel of the time, through the terrific dialogue and his clean punchy prose. Thieves Like Us is a real joy to read because it's a no BS book; you can really feel the characters when you're reading it like they were right next to you.

That violence is a natural part of that life goes without saying. The violence portrayed is done so without gore or sensationalism--it's beautifully integrated into the story, adding that much more to the power and resonance of this work.

Who should read this? Those who want to know where hardboiled came from. Those who want a strong sense of American literature--i.e., what America contributed to world literature. Those who are students of the Depression, adding to their understanding of that period. And those who love a great story.

A true classic. Don't miss!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant proto-hardboiled novel
Review: Written in 1937, Thieves Like Us--while not the first hardboiled novel (that honor goes to the work of Dashiell Hammett, hands down)--is nevertheless one of the great hardboiled classics. Basis for two films--Nicholas Ray's 1948 They Live By Night and Robert Altman's 1974 film of the same name--it tells of working class joes during the Depression who make a living by robbing banks, talking about it as white-collar slobs would a day at the office. Only with a lot more slang, spice, and color.

The writing is brisk, fresh, and succinct. Anderson is great at capturing the feel of the time, through the terrific dialogue and his clean punchy prose. Thieves Like Us is a real joy to read because it's a no BS book; you can really feel the characters when you're reading it like they were right next to you.

That violence is a natural part of that life goes without saying. The violence portrayed is done so without gore or sensationalism--it's beautifully integrated into the story, adding that much more to the power and resonance of this work.

Who should read this? Those who want to know where hardboiled came from. Those who want a strong sense of American literature--i.e., what America contributed to world literature. Those who are students of the Depression, adding to their understanding of that period. And those who love a great story.

A true classic. Don't miss!

Rating:
Summary: birth of a genre?
Review: You've got to feel sorry for the guy who originates a genre. When he creates his work it's so original and exciting that it spawns a legion of imitators, but decades down the road, when folks pick up that seminal work, it feels dated and derivative. This seems to be the case with Thieves Like Us. When it was published, Anderson was compared to Faulkner and Hemingway. Then it looks like the book experienced lengthy periods when it was out of print, experienced revivals when it was twice adapted for the movies and currently enjoys a fairly strong reputation as a representative noir crime story from the Depression, along the lines of Hammett or Chandler. Now those are some pretty weighty comparisons to be throwing around, and I don't know that they are fair, but the book will stand quite nicely on it's own.

Anderson tells the story of three convicts: Elmo "Chicamaw" Mobley, T.W. "T-Dub" Masefield and Bowie Bowers, who escape from an Alcatona, OK prison in 1935 and return to the only jobs they are any good at--robbing banks. The three quickly pile up a tidy sum of cash and start living high on the hog, at which point the story focusses on Bowers and his courtship of a young girl named Keechie. The plot elements are familiar: folks don't mind the boys robbing banks because so many lost their bank deposits in the Crash that they figure bankers are thieves, alcohol and gambling eat away at the money pretty quickly, everyone dreams of going straight and just needs a little sum of ready cash to do so but that cash always seems to disappear, young lovers go on the lam, there's sensationalistic press coverage and when the boys set out to commit one last robbery, we're fairly sure there's trouble ahead. But it's all deftly handled, in spare, punchy prose and, except for some brief sermonizing about evil capitalists, it's reasonably free of working class cant; a seminal work of crime fiction.

GRADE: B+

Rating:
Summary: birth of a genre?
Review: You've got to feel sorry for the guy who originates a genre. When he creates his work it's so original and exciting that it spawns a legion of imitators, but decades down the road, when folks pick up that seminal work, it feels dated and derivative. This seems to be the case with Thieves Like Us. When it was published, Anderson was compared to Faulkner and Hemingway. Then it looks like the book experienced lengthy periods when it was out of print, experienced revivals when it was twice adapted for the movies and currently enjoys a fairly strong reputation as a representative noir crime story from the Depression, along the lines of Hammett or Chandler. Now those are some pretty weighty comparisons to be throwing around, and I don't know that they are fair, but the book will stand quite nicely on it's own.

Anderson tells the story of three convicts: Elmo "Chicamaw" Mobley, T.W. "T-Dub" Masefield and Bowie Bowers, who escape from an Alcatona, OK prison in 1935 and return to the only jobs they are any good at--robbing banks. The three quickly pile up a tidy sum of cash and start living high on the hog, at which point the story focusses on Bowers and his courtship of a young girl named Keechie. The plot elements are familiar: folks don't mind the boys robbing banks because so many lost their bank deposits in the Crash that they figure bankers are thieves, alcohol and gambling eat away at the money pretty quickly, everyone dreams of going straight and just needs a little sum of ready cash to do so but that cash always seems to disappear, young lovers go on the lam, there's sensationalistic press coverage and when the boys set out to commit one last robbery, we're fairly sure there's trouble ahead. But it's all deftly handled, in spare, punchy prose and, except for some brief sermonizing about evil capitalists, it's reasonably free of working class cant; a seminal work of crime fiction.

GRADE: B+