SAVAGE NIGHT

"Yes, there is a hell, my boy, and you do not have to dig for it..."

I watched THE KILLER INSIDE ME (2010) the other night. It's a terrific little film noir based on the novel of the same name by Jim Thompson. I'll try and post a review of the film at a later date but suffice it to say that after watching the movie, I was in the mood to read some more of Thompson's work.

I have previously read and enjoyed THE KILLER INSIDE ME (1952), AFTER DARK, MY SWEET (1955), THE GETAWAY (1958) and THE GRIFTERS (1963). I had copies of WILD TOWN (1957) and SAVAGE NIGHT (1953) on my shelves and I've now read both. Again, I'll write about WILD TOWN in a separate post, but here, I want to address SAVAGE NIGHT.

SPOILER WARNING: It's going to be tough to write about this book without giving some major plot points away so don't say I didn't warn you.

SAVAGE NIGHT is told in first person narration but one Carl Bigelow, which is not his real name. He's a short in stature (five foot tall) young man whose diminutive size and boyish good looks, make him appear much younger than he really is. Bigelow is, in reality, "Little" Charlie Bigger, a cold blooded, psychopathic murderer who has been sent to the small town of Peardale, New York to kill someone. Bigelow has been given his orders by the mysterious New York City crime lord known only as "The Man". Bigelow's target is Jake Winroy, a broken down alcoholic with ties to organized crime who is set to testify in an upcoming trial.

Bigelow's cover story for being in the town is his enrollment as a student at a small teacher's college. He rents a room in the Winroy house where he meets Fay Winroy, Jake's hot-to-trot wife, Mr. Kendall, a kindly older man who takes a keen interest in helping Bigelow and Ruthie, an attractive young woman with one leg who works as the Winroy's maid.

Before you know it, Bigelow beds both Ruthie and Fay. He has real feelings for the crippled young woman while Fay becomes his accomplice in his plan to murder her husband. Kendall gets Bigelow a job at a bakery and shows him the ropes at the college.

It all seems like a simple enough set-up. All Bigelow has to do is bide his time and wait for the perfect opportunity to strike but this being a Jim Thompson novel, there's nothing simple going on here at all. Bigelow is suffering from tuberculosis and it's only a matter of time until the consumptive disease claims him. The local sheriff has his suspicions about Bigelow while Bigelow is convinced that someone in the Winroy household is also under the control of The Man.

Things come to a quick and violent end in the last chapters of the book. Winroy is killed (but not by Bigelow). His killer is the last person you would expect and Bigelow and the killer escape into the country where they hole up in the deserted cabin of a writer that Bigelow once met. And it's here that things get really, really weird.

Not that things haven't already been slightly off kilter from the git-go. After all, this perverse, hard boiled thriller of broken people, murder and betrayal is already weird enough. All of Thompson's novels take place in a universe of existential dread and suffocating doom. But this ending, much like the final chapter of THE GETAWAY, is truly bizarre. You'll have to read it for yourself to find out what goes on but I'll give you this much:

It has something to do with goats.

SAVAGE NIGHT is a penetrating look into the psyche of a killer who is teetering on the brink of oblivion. It's raw, tough stuff, told by a writer who brought a singular vision, narrative style and twisted thematic concerns to everything he wrote.

Highly recommended.