A HELL OF A WOMAN by Jim thompson

Reviewed by Katrina Munro

Frank "Dolly" Dillon is a man who is down on his luck. Stuck in a loveless and destructive marriage and selling door to door with Pay-E-Zee stores, his life is unwittingly turned upside down when Dolly knocks on the door of the Farrell house hold whilst chasing up a bad debt of a Pay-E-Zee customer, Pete Hendrickson, who allegedly does the occasional odd job there.

It is here Dolly is introduced to the mean spirited Mrs Farrell, a spiteful old woman who takes a great deal of pleasure in giving Hendrickson’s address to Dolly, and that’s not all. The black-hearted old crone also has her eyes on the thirty-two dollar silverware set that Dolly has in his briefcase.

Unwilling to part with her money, the old lady, slyly wonders whether or not her niece could pay for the item. A puzzled Dolly finds himself hustled inside the house and this is where he meets the woman who will serve as his muse for most of the book: the sweet, shy, and beautiful Mona.

Predictably, Dolly is instantly taken with Mona and is shocked to see the bruises and markings covering her body. He discovers that Mona is practically held prisoner in the house, and is forced into prostitution to earn income for the household. In a form of seemingly rare altruism from the anti-hero of this novel, Dolly gives Mona the silverware set, unable to take advantage of the mentally and physically abused young woman and promises to help her escape from her situation.

However, as is the case with most Jim Thompson novels nothing is quite what it seems and before long, via some clever plot twists and a host of morally grey characters, Dolly finds his life becoming increasingly complicated and spinning out of his control – a collection of Thompson trademarks that never seem to become stale.

These trademarks assert themselves quickly into the story shortly after Dolly’s strange encounter with the Farrells: his marriage to the haughty Joyce completely breaks down and he finds himself in jail over fiddled profit and loss ledgers courtesy of shady Pay-E-Zee boss Staples.

The outlook seems bleak until Mona, the unlikeliest of rescuers, pays back the money owed to Pay-E-Zee and tells Dolly about the one hundred thousand dollars in cash she found hidden in her aunt’s cellar. Dolly immediately hatches a plan to liberate the money and Mona from the clutches of her wicked aunt. This is where the story really begins, as does Dolly’s downward spiral into insanity. And where Thompson provides the only real moral of this tale: no good deed goes unpunished.

It is extremely difficult not to feel some sort of sympathy towards the main character in this tale, as he finds himself cornered into a situation that seems futile, only to have a glimmer of hope handed to him, and then snatched away again in the cruellest possible way. It is Thompson at his best – creating a character that possesses few desirable traits and then making the reader wince as the character carefully constructs his own downfall. This theme is more prominent in A Hell Of A Women than that of Thompson’s other novels.

Here, Thompson has crafted together a spellbinding tale of greed, innocence, disillusionment, despair and bitterness, all wrapped together in a package of violence as only he can. The characters are flawed; morals are almost non-existent, yet Thompson has a gift for weaving an incredible tale that makes it almost impossible for the reader to put down. In short, A Hell of A Woman is a thriller that can proudly stand beside Pop. 1280 and Killer Inside Me as a noir classic.

Copyright© 2003 Katrina Munro

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Katrina Munro works as a lowly paid shop assistant in central Edinburgh.
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