The Killing Paperback – August 2, 2008

Johnny Clay had spent four long years in the joint, four long years plotting the best crime ever imagined. It was going to be foolproof. He wasn't going to recruit a bunch of hoods who would turn on him and squeal. No. he was going to get a bunch of ordinary guys who had every reason to pull the caper off and get away clean. "They all have jobs, they all live seemingly decent, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them."Johnny was but one of a crew of absolutely unforgettable characters White created in this book.Four years hadn't changed Johnny much. There was now the slightest of gray over his ears, but his gray eyes were as clear and untroubled as they had always been. The time behind bars hadn't soured him, but he now had a "serious undercurrent to him which hadn't been there before" and "a sort of grim purposefulness which he had always lacked."Marvin Unger was a court stenographer. He had connections and information. He had a bank account. Johnny had found him when he was looking around for a guy with a respectable front, "who had a little larceny in his heart and who might back the play."Big Mike Henty was a bartender at the track. "He was an inveterate gambler and in spite of endless years of consistently losing more than half of his weekly pay check on the horses, he still had a great deal of difficulty where he stood at the close of the last race. He had no mind for figures at all." "Big Mike was a moral and straight-laced man, in spite of a weakness for playing the horses and an even greater weakness for over excess in eating." He wanted desperately to get his family out of the crappy neighborhood they lived in and have his daughter safely ensconsed in a suburban school district.George Peatty was thirty-eight, gaunt, nervous, and looked his age. He had crooked, squirrel-like teeth and long fingered hands of a pianist. "His clothes were conservative both as to line and as to price." "After two years of marriage, he still spent most of his idle time thinking of his wife." He did know, however, that she was bored and disenchanted and that somewhere along the way he had failed as a husband and as a man. But, that was because of luck and fate which consigned him to his limited earning capacity as a cashier at the racetrack.Officer Randy Kennan was heavily indebted to Leo Steiner, to the tune of nearly three grand and he didn't have the dough to pay even the vig on the loan.Johnny also figured to hire three guys who weren't in on the deal as distractions at the track while the hold-up went on. What could go wrong? What indeed? If you are at all familiar with hardboiled pulp from the fifties, you know that there is always a woman to blame (or quite often, at least).Sherry Peatty had "long, theatrical lashes half closed over her smoldering eyes" and her body was "small, beautifully molded, deceptively soft" and she moved "with the grace of a cat." "At twenty-four, Sherry Peatty was a woman who positively exuded - . There was a velvet texture to her dark olive skin her face was almost Slavic in contour and she affected a tight, short hair cut which went far to set off the loveliness of her small, pert face." She was tired of the dump they lived in and not having any money. When Johnny got a load of her, he wondered how Peatty had rated anything this pretty. But, he soon realized that she was a tramp, that she was wide open and anybody could take a crack at her. "A tramp. A goddamned tramp. A pushover." "That was the trouble. She was beautiful. She was a bum."And, Sherry had someone on the side: a bad guy, Val Cannon, who intrigued her because he dressed expensively, but never told her what he did for a living. "She took it for granted that he was mixed up in some sort of racket or other." Hopefully, George didn't blab to Sherry and Sherry didn't blab to Val cause then there would be more trouble.White writes like a consummate professional. The story is compelling as it unfolds piece by piece. Johnny has this job planned out to the "T" and nothing could possibly go wrong.This is one terrific, top-notch piece of hardboiled fiction. There are few who can write as well as White and do it so effortlessly, creating such unforgettable characters and such a tightly woven plot. Five stars, indeed.

I absolutely love this product and I will order this item again.

I was assigned this book in a film noir class and really enjoyed it! It was a fun read with a great noir twist.

Fantastic book, made into a classic book!

Very close to the film.

Good. Have not read yet but looking forward to it. ENJOYED THE SHOW! Every one should read the book behind shows to get a good perspective of the characters.

The Killing is probably best-known as one of the finest examples of the noir film genre ever made. Directed by a young Stanley Kubrick, it was adapted from the novel Clean Break by Lionel White. Starring Sterling Hayden and Coleen Gray, it tells the story of a newly released con, Johnny Clay, and the crew he has patched together to pull off a race track heist which he’s been planning for years while cooped up in the joint. The plan relies on Clay finding a number of otherwise honest men with money issues who he can cajole into ignoring their consciences for just a few minutes during the biggest horse race of the year in order to reap a huge payoff.Things go awry when one of the team’s members, George Peatty, a mild-mannered bet window operator with a wife too hot for him by several degrees, let’s slip to his unfaithful bride, Sherry, that he’s due to come into a big score. The story in the novel is told in third person, and the plot is slowly unveiled one chapter at a time until all of the pieces come together in the third act when the heist goes down without a hitch but somehow Johnny Clay’s dreams still manage to fall apart.A huge Kubrick fan, I watched the movie years ago but had never bothered to read the book, even though heists and noir are among my favorite pastimes. Then I saw that Mike Dennis had released an audio version of the classic novel using the more familiar movie title, and I was in. Mike gifted me a copy, and I devoured it in three days.Mike’s voice perfectly captures the mood. He has a somewhat classic tone in the narration, like a 60’s period news reader, his cadence is smooth and unclipped, but the pacing never drags. Meanwhile the nuances of Peatty’s meakness and Clay’s bravado shine through in the dialog. In fact, the entire cast comes off as individuals despite all being voiced with only subtle variation by the same narrator.Mike has cleverly begun carving out a niche in the narration biz, finding old properties that fit his voice which the right’s holders haven’t bothered to give the audio treatment, and working out a deal. They don’t make movies like this anymore. They don’t write books like this anymore either. But thanks to talented and clever men like Mike Dennis who see the opportunity, an entire new generation can still be teleported back to the days when they did, and the world is all the richer for it. I seldom give full star ratings, but there’s really nothing in this nostalgic production to complain about.