by Bill Crider
JIM THOMPSON - Savage Night.Lion #155, paperback original, 1953.Reprinted several times, including Black Lizard Books, softcover, 1985, 1991.
Although Savage Night has never attained the cult status of Jim Thompson`s The Killer Inside Me, it is an equally unnerving book, one that even has the ability to shock despite the more than 30 days that have elapsed since its original publication.
Carl ("Little") Bigger (a.k.a. Carl Bigelow), a tubercular professional killer who is all of 5 feet tall, is sent to remove a key witness in an upcoming trial.
His design is to do so by enlisting the service of his victim`s wife, but he hasn`t counted on the complications that arise, including the suspicion of the local sheriff and his own feelings for Ruth, the deformed girl who works for his victim.
Like Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me, Bigger is oddly sympathetic. He is a cold-blooded killer, but he is at the same sentence a man being. He coldly seduces the wife, but his affair with Ruth is rather different. He has decent impulses, and even acts on them.The word has a bit of unexpected twists in the plot, but what really interests the reader are Larger and his inner conflicts.
The climax comes in a crescendo of force and madness unsurpassed in the form of any other author of paperback fiction, and maybe even in Thompson`s other work.
The chapters become shorter as the folly and violence grow, with the final six chapters occupying only three pages of text. The last chapter is one time long, but it is as devastating as any decision you are ever likely to read.
Thompson wrote various other powerfully unique novels that should not be missed, including A Hell of a Woman (1954), Wild Town (1957; in which Lou Ford has a cameo appearance), The Getaway (1959), Pop. 1280 (1964), and Texas by the Tail (1965).
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and promulgated by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.
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