Lionel White (1905–1985)

Clean Break is the novel that Stanley Kubrick adapted for his 1956 film, The Killing, starring Sterling Hayden. The novel itself is a crisp, no-nonsense noir study of desperation, tight planning, and that kind of preordained failure that makes noir so dire and dark.

Johnny Clay is newly released from prison, and the one thing he learned is that if you’re going to take a risk, take a big one for a big payoff. You could get caught and jailed for stealing ten dollars from a gas station, and show more you could get caught stealing two million dollars from a racetrack. Take the big gamble, don’t mess with the little ones.

He assembles a team with a core of equally desperate types, looking for one big score to wipe out lives of dispiriting frustration. And Clay knows what he’s doing. He matches each member of his team to a job he knows they can do and nothing more. The plan is daring, but it’s designed like a dance with multiple dancers doing small parts, orchestrated into a whole bigger than their sum.

You really know from the beginning that this isn’t going to work. Its careful planning is also its weakness. If anything, anything at all, goes wrong, or if something unexpected jams the gears, it’s all going down in flames. That’s not a spoiler. This is just noir. No happy endings.

I haven’t read anything else by Lionel White. Several other of his novels have been adapted as movies — The Snatchers (adapted as The Night of the Following Day), Obsession (adapted as Pierrot le Fou), and more. His writing is very, very clean, and things move through a plot funnel toward a seemingly inevitable climax. He follows each character, in an almost documentary style, accentuating that sense of orchestrated planning. I’m going to read more of his stuff.

Last thing I will say is that, as good as the novel is, Kubrick did it one better. Watch the movie after you’ve read the book. The ending has got to be one of the most brilliant and dire endings you’ll ever see. show less

Classic claustrophobic story of bus passengers caught in the middle of a murderer's attempt to escape from a journey back to Death Row. Once you get past the unlikelihood of a notorious murderer, who has already escaped from death row being taken back--from California to Texas--on a bus (!) guarded only by a 71-year-old deputy being forced into retirement, you can settle back and enjoy the interactions of the well-drawn cast of characters. The story is exceedingly brutal and graphic in a show more couple of places, but delivers a very satisfying conclusion. A strong sense of justice, whatever the price that must be paid, runs through all three of White's books that I have read thus far. He is a very sure-handed author whose prose only occasionally goes overboard. This is an economical 124 pages, although in small type, but that is all White needs to tell his tale. Modern authors should take note. show less

Johnny Clay had spent four long years in the joint, four long years plotting the best crime ever imagined. It was going to be foolproof. He wasn't going to recruit a bunch of hoods who would turn on him and
squeal. No. he was going to get a bunch of ordinary guys who had every reason to pull the caper off and get away clean. "They all have jobs, they all live seemingly decent, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them."

Johnny was but one of a crew of show more absolutely unforgettable characters
White created in this book. Four years hadn't changed Johnny much. There was now the slightest of gray over his ears, but his gray eyes were as clear and untroubled
as they had always been. The time behind bars hadn't soured him, but he now had a "serious undercurrent to him which hadn't been there before" and "a sort of grim purposefulness which he had always
lacked."

Marvin Unger was a court stenographer. He had connections and information. He had a bank account. Johnny had found him when he was looking around for a guy with a respectable front, "who had a little
larceny in his heart and who might back the play."

Big Mike Henty was a bartender at the track. "He was an inveterate gambler and in spite of endless years of consistently losing more than half of his weekly pay check on the horses, he still had a great deal of difficulty where he stood at the close of the last race. He had no mind
for figures at all."

"Big Mike was a moral and straight-laced man, in spite of a weakness for playing the horses and an even greater weakness for over excess in eating." He wanted desperately to get his family out of the crappy neighborhood they lived in and have his daughter safely ensconsed in a suburban school district.

George Peatty was thirty-eight, gaunt, nervous, and looked his age. He had crooked, squirrel-like teeth and long fingered hands of a pianist. "His clothes were conservative both as to line and as to price." "After two years of marriage, he still spent most of his idle time thinking of
his wife." He did know, however, that she was bored and disenchanted and that somewhere along the way he had failed as a husband and as a man. But, that was because of luck and fate which consigned him to his limited earning capacity as a cashier at the racetrack.

Officer Randy Kennan was heavily indebted to Leo Steiner, to the tune of nearly three grand and he didn't have the dough to pay even the vig on the loan.

Johnny also figured to hire three guys who weren't in on the deal as distractions at the track while the hold-up went on. What could go wrong? What indeed? If you are at all familiar with hardboiled pulp from the fifties, you know that there is always a woman to blame (or quite often, at least).

Sherry Peatty had "long, theatrical lashes half closed over her smoldering eyes" and her body was "small, beautifully molded,
deceptively soft" and she moved "with the grace of a cat." "At twenty-four, Sherry Peatty was a woman who positively exuded - . There was a velvet texture to her dark olive skin her face was almost Slavic in contour and she affected a tight, short hair cut which went far to set
off the loveliness of her small, pert face." She was tired of the dump they lived in and not having any money. When Johnny got a load of her, he wondered how Peatty had rated anything this pretty. But, he
soon realized that she was a tramp, that she was wide open and anybody could take a crack at her. "A tramp. A goddamned tramp. A pushover." "That was the trouble. She was beautiful. She was a bum."

And, Sherry had someone on the side: a bad guy, Val Cannon, who intrigued her because he dressed expensively, but never told her what he did for a living. "She took it for granted that he was mixed up in
some sort of racket or other." Hopefully, George didn't blab to Sherry
and Sherry didn't blab to Val cause then there would be more trouble.

White writes like a consummate professional. The story is compelling
as it unfolds piece by piece. Johnny has this job planned out to the "T"
and nothing could possibly go wrong.
This is one terrific, top-notch piece of hardboiled fiction. There are few
who can write as well as White and do it so effortlessly, creating such
unforgettable characters and such a tightly woven plot. Five stars, show less

White is a very reliable writer of compelling pulp fiction. Like some of his other books, this concerns the planning and aftermath of a large crime. Here, however, the focus is different. The well-drawn cast of characters, rather than the caper, is at the center of this book. The protagonist owes the planner of the heist a lot and feels personal loyalty even while disliking him. The fact that he has fallen in love with the boss's mistress isn't helping matters. The boss himself is very show more interesting--intelligent, but also ruthless. The other characters range from rather admirable professional criminals who know their jobs and do them well to borderline (both sides of the border!) psychopaths. White brings them all together, along with the local townspeople in a small community on Florida's Atlantic coast, for a very compelling, page-turning, quick read that doesn't fall into the kind of predictability some tales like this have. As a writer, White only occasionally overdoes it. Most of his prose is clean, well-written, and to the point. Highly recommended. (Please see my reviews of some of his other books--all are recommended.) show less