I've just finished the O'Farrell book I mentioned previously,
"Thin Edge of Violence." I really liked this book. I read it
only because of research I'm doing on a biography of actor
George Reeves, who appeared in an episode of the old
"Suspense" TV show, an episode which was likewise entitled
"Thin Edge of Violence." I presume, though I still don't
know, that the TV show was an adaptation of O'Farrell's novel
(even though it's a bit difficult to figure how they'd have
done this in half an hour of air time).
At any rate, I came to the book knowing nothing of O'Farrell
or his works, but, brother, am I a convert now. O'Farrell's
story is about a nice enough guy who is breaking off an
affair, and the not-so-nice guy who crosses his path by
accident and by doing so really mixes up the stew. One of the
things I liked is that each chapter (generally) is told from
the viewpoint of one of the four main characters, so that
there is a "Rashomon"-like air to the thing (not that
disparity of interpretation of the events by the characters
is in itself particularly important). It's quite fun to read
a chapter revealing one character's thoughts and motivations,
then pick up the timeline of another character as he or she
interprets events entirely differently.
Although at first there seemed to be no hint of a hard-boiled
quality to the book, after a couple of chapters it began to
toughen up, until it got quite nasty, in a wonderful way. And
what I liked most, I think, was the way O'Farrell
occasionally dropped hints that something else was going on
on the periphery of the story, something that had great
weight and consequence, and that whatever that something was,
however important it was, he wasn't going to hit his readers
over the head with it. We find it out all in good time, and
when we do, it's just placed there gently, subtly, creating
great resonance in a story that could just as easily (but not
as well) have been told without it.
I highly recommend "Thin Edge of Violence," and I'm going to
start grabbing O'Farrells (and Grews--as someone noted, he
occasionally wrote under the name William Grew). BTW, does
anyone know if O'Farrell's tale called, IIRC,
"The Golden Key" is another title for "Thin Edge..."? A
golden key is a prime prop in "Thin Edge..."
Jim Beaver
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