The Big Clock

This is an excellent novel, which was made into an almost equally excellent movie. Well-plotted, and told in an innovative way, this story is short but intense. Fearing was a splendid writer.

The basis for the Ray Milland film of the same name, and its 80s remake with Kevin Costner NO WAY OUT, Kenneth Fearing's THE BIG CLOCK is one of the most famous and most ingenious noir thrillers of the 30s and 40s. A magazine publisher much like Henry Luce has murdered his mistress in a rage; his top aide convinces him to pin it on the last man to see the woman alive (whose face and name the publisher does not know). They enlist the help of the editor of the publishing house's crime magazine to lead the manhunt--a man who happens to be the very one for whom they're searching. The existential implications of engaging in a manhunt for yourself do not seem to escape Fearing, but his feat with this work is to expand even beyond that. The publication house which forms the novel's central locale brings out magazines that cover almost every aspect of modern mass culture, from news to business to Hollywood to true crime. And, stepping even beyond that, because the novel's key figure also collects the art of an obscure painter (which becomes crucial to the central mystery), THE BIG CLOCK also interrogates the ways in which high art is itself dependent upon mass culture. Sometimes Fearing's book is too ambitious for its own good (the multiple narrator trick is not handled as deftly as you'd like), but on the whole its not only a tight little thriller but it also manages to engage intelligently with some of the most important social and cultural premises of its day. This is a book that greatly deserved to be rediscovered by NYRB.

George Stroud works on a true-crime magazine and is having an affair with his boss' mistress. When she is killed, the boss puts George in charge of the magazine's investigation of the crime. George must hide his identity as the last known person to see her alive, without seeming to hold up the investigation. The plot is intricate and satisfying, and moves quickly. I could not put the book down.

This book is first-rate. Who cares if it was first published in 1946? It's just as fresh now as it was then. For such a little book it has everything - irony, satire, unique plot, and suspense. The book has a sense of urgency as you read it because each of the chapters is written in the first person, but the chapters are not the first-person of the same character. A number of different characters are highlighted in this way, and this gives a curious sense of really getting to know the characters quickly. The book has a journalistic slant, and the main character, George Stroud, is placed in the position of trying to find himself as he is a key player in what turned out to be a murder of the woman that he had just spent the weekend with. George knows who the killer actually is, and he also knows that if this killer finds out who he George is, he will be silenced as the killer will want to shift blame to him. George is racing against the clock to keep his own identity secret and to save his life. - A very good noir novel.

The book's classic Crime Noir plot is not itself surprising, though it is incredibly well done and keeps you on the edge of your seat. The pacing and the shifting points of view, however, were a continual surprise. Just when the book is about to get caught up in its simple story, it shifts to a different perspective and pauses there just long enough to slow down the pace and set up the next tick of the clock.