A Hell of a Woman
Jim Thompson
"Jim Thompson is -- was a writer of pulp fiction novels back in the 50's. It's as though his novels are disguised -- they're like masterpieces of literature described as pulp novels.
This book is about a sort of a door-to-door salesman. He works for a shady outfit called Pay EZ Stores, which is a company that goes from door-to-door sort of preying on the poor by selling them junk for an initial low down payment and then hounds and harasses them. So Dolly Dillon is the character's name who works for Pay EZ Stores, and he becomes embroiled in this murder plot where he discovers this old woman who is -- has a beautiful granddaughter and is basically keeping her in the house enslaved, and they come up with a plot to murder her and take the money and rescue the girl. It's a first person narration. The character tends to go off on these digressions about how his life basically sucks. Slowly but surely, as the book comes to an end, he's sort of -- his personality is fractured, and he's sort of like -- he's two people, and he just goes completely insane.
I would give this book five out of five stars."
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