Books like The Getaway

I didn't believe a word of this and it's not like this was a first novel, it was his 19th, so I'm thinking that he was maybe drunk in charge of a typewriter or was just having a real bad month, or something. First off, I don't like characters called Doc. Even if they're doctors. This is a personal quirk, so I tried to disregard it. Second, if this Doc McCoy is such an all-round criminal mastermind – and that is the very term used on p 58 - groan! – how come he got caught and went down for a 20 stretch in the first place? Third, didn't he notice that his right-hand man for the bank heist was a drooling psycho who was quite likely to fuck up the whole caper? Fourth, I don't think a clan of "hill people, rebels and outlaws…people with a very real sense of honor" (the boss of which is a six-foot woman called Ma - of course she is!) would be old friends with this superior criminal mastermind at all since all he does is dishonourably rob, kill and smirk. I think Jim Thompson just couldn't be bothered and called up Central Noir Agencies in 1958 and said "Yeah, I need a brainy criminal, a tough guy with mental problems, a cute wifey type, you know, perky blonde, yeah, and a bunch of honourable hill people… how soon can you get them over here?"Fifth, every so often Jim Thompson likes to impart his knowledge of the underworld to the reader, so he will say things like :Doc prowled about the cabin, automatically inspecting it as he did any place that was strange to him. He was looking for nothing in particular. Simply looking. Most top-drawer criminals have this habit. Eyes must be rolled and a chorus of "you think, Jim, you think?" spring spontaneously from the lips of even the most well-disposed reader. Sixth, the last 20 pages of this absurd melodrama change gear so violently that I think the gear stick must have come right off. The spray-on tough realism of the first 120 pages is abandoned and now we get some kind of Kafkaesque dreamy symbolism all about ultimate justice or karma or sumpin. At this point my eyes were beyond rolling. They could roll no more.