The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing started out slow. George Stroud works for a conglomerate of magazines in their Crimeways department. He is a simple family man with a wife and daughter, but his dreams and ambitious are big. When he has an affair with his boss's girlfriend and she winds up bludgeoned to death things get a little tricky. It's a story of conspiracy and cat and mouse. George must prove his innocence when everything points to the contrary. Once it gets going it's fascinating! ( )

I like some of Fearing's poetry, and Raymond Chandler raved about Fearing's noir novels. Also, the New York Review Books are generally great, so my hopes were high for this book. But it's no good. Fearing used the plot as a rack on which to hand some irrelevant, not very interesting ideas -- like incorporating individuals so that others could invest in their future. Even the names of the magazines for which the characters work ('Futureways', 'Crimeways', etc.) were annoying. ( )

Pauline Delos is dead. But who killed her? The man spotted in the alley beside her building, or the one seen entering her apartment later that same night? The Big Clock is about a man hunt. Or more precisely, two men hunting each other. But they're not strangers. They know each other, even work together. They both know which one of them did the deed. The only question is who will take the blame.

This little noir is a fast read, a real page-turner. The clock motif really helps with pacing; you feel the walls closing in on our protagonist(s). It's not a who-did-it but rather a how-did-they-get-away-with-it. It does feel dated, but truthfully, that's something you live with when you read in this genre. I am rather peeved at the Introduction, which gives away quite a bit of the story. I don't understand why they put that type of material in the front and not afterwards.

I picked this book because I read that it was the basis of the movie No Way Out. There was another, earlier, film made off of it too. I can see why they keep coming back to it, it's very clever. It reminds me of the movies The Fugitive and Out of Time and of Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying, which was one of my favorite books last year. ( )

THE BIG CLOCK has been called a "brilliant study in noir" (by The Globe and Mail) that has a plot "stretched tight as a drum" (according to the NY Times). I'll second those thoughts and add that in this short, well-crafted novel, Kenneth Fearing skillfully combines elements of the thriller, noir and social satire into a story that moves at a good clip and keeps you hooked--once the hook catches you, which really doesn't happen until nearly halfway through.
Read the entire review at http://thebookgrrl.blogspot.com/2008/... ( )

best multiple 1st person thriller of the era. ( )