The Grifters

The Grifters

By Jim Thompson

Pages

224

Rating

3.93

Year

1963

ThrillerFictionMysteryCrimeNoirNovels

Description

To his friends, to his coworkers, and even to his mistress Moira, Roy Dillon is an honest, hardworking salesman. He lives in a cheap hotel just within his pay bracket. He goes to work every day. He has hundreds of friends and associates who could attest to his good character.

Yet, hidden behind three gaudy clown paintings in Roy's pallid hotel room, sits fifty-two thousand dollars—the money Roy makes from his short cons, his 'grifting.' For years, Roy has effortlessly maintained control over his house-of-cards life—until the simplest con goes wrong, and he finds himself critically injured and at the mercy of the most dangerous woman he ever met: his own mother.

The Grifters is an ingeniously crafted story of deception and betrayal that was the basis for Stephen Frears' and Martin Scorsese's 1990 critically-acclaimed film of the same name.

The Grifters by Jim Thompson - Bookist