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    A Hell of a Woman
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    A Hell of a Woman
    Unavailable
    A Hell of a Woman
    Audiobook5 hours

    A Hell of a Woman

    Written by Jim Thompson

    Narrated by Thomas Vincent Kelly

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Frank "Dolly" Dillon has a job he hates, working sales and collections for Pay-E-Zee Stores, a wife named Joyce he can't stand, and an account balance that barely allows him to pay the bills each month. Working door-to-door one day, trying to eke money out of folk with even less of it than he has, Dolly crosses paths with a beautiful young woman named Mona Farrell. Mona's being forced by her aunt to do things she doesn't like, with men she doesn't know--she wants out, any way she can get it. And to a man who wants nothing of what he has, Mona sure looks like something he actually does.

    Soon Dolly and Mona find themselves involved in a scheme of robbery, murder and mayhem that makes Dolly's blood run cold. As Dolly's plans begin to unravel, his mind soon follows.

    In A HELL OF A WOMAN, Jim Thompson offers another arresting portrait of a deviant mind, in an ambitious crime novel that ranks among his best work.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateMar 1, 2012
    ISBN9781611137255
    Unavailable
    A Hell of a Woman
    Author

    Jim Thompson

    Jim Thompson is an internationally published firearms writer, photographer, and consultant with more than five decades of experience as a serious shooter and experimenter. He purchased his first M1 in 1963. His dedication to precise historical research combined with his practical, empirical insight has yielded significant contributions to the fields of military history and weapons development. He resides in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

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    Reviews for A Hell of a Woman

    4/5

    102 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is my second Thompson book, and when I thought 'The Grifters' was an odd piece of business, I clearly had no idea what Thompson was capable of. This pulp study of a deranged mind often reads like a twelve-year old's violent fantasy; in the end it all works surprisingly well, but you'd be forgiven for dropping the book forty pages in with a confused sigh. Stick with it. It's going to be something quite different.
    • 5/5
      Top notch pulp masterpiece. Jim Thompson has a well-deserved reputation as one of the greatest of all the pulp writers. He wrote thirty novels in the late 1940's and the 1950's, many of which later became box office hits. But watching a movie based on one of Thompson's books is not the same as reading the original material. Although hundreds of writers have tried to ape his style, there was only one Jim Thompson. His tales are sordid. They are filled with psychopaths and grifters. His heroes are anti-heroes. They are not just criminals, but often mean, violent, sadistic men. Also, his books are filled with a sardonic sense of humor that often leaves the reader laughing out loud.

      A Hell of A Woman is classic Jim Thompson. It is filled with the kind of characters and sardonic humor that Thompson is famous for. It is told in the first person and the reader is left to figure how much of what "Dolly" Dillon says is accurate and how much is his making excuses for his actions.
      As with all of Thompson's books, it is not the plot which is ultimately fascinating, but his bizarre, despair-filled world beginning in the first chapter with the shocking incident of the old lady offering up her sweet niece in exchange for whatever trinkets a traveling salesman is willing to part with.
      There are simply no redeeming characters in this book. Dillon is wife- beating, old lady-murdering, scum. Mona eagerly wants Dillon to kill her aunt so they can run off with the money. Joyce is sloppy and trampy and money-hungry. It's a bleak, miserable world that Dillon lives in and everyone is a welcher, a scoundrel, a cheat.

      But, what Thompson does is take this miserable existence and makes it interesting. He tells it with Dillon's voice with Dillon bitching about the slow unattractive waitresses and, when asked why he doesn't try some other restaurant, Dillon says its all the same everywhere, nothing is any better anywhere. No one else writes like this. Thompson didn't just focus on the anti-heroes, but he got inside their heads and the reader felt their misery and Thompson did this way before anyone else got wise to doing it. Indeed, it is the physicality of emotions that Thompson conveys so well.
      It is, indeed, a pulp noir masterpiece, but it clearly will not appeal to everyone given its focus on twisted people.
    • 4/5
      Jim Thompson is a good writer. He writes hard-boiled style fiction that tends to feature dark and reprehensible characters. A Hell of a Woman was a decent read with a great ending. Thompson's ability to transfer paranoia from his protagonist to the reader is commendable, but the true shinning light of the novel occurs at final pages of the novel. The ending offers the reader multiple realities as the main character suffers from a nervous breakdown, leaving the reader to decipher the underlying truth for himself.
    • 3/5
      Frank "Dolly" Dillon has been working as a door-to-door salesman all his life. Trying to find the one that will make him rich but it's always someone else's fault when each successive attempt fails. We pick up his story when he's at the lower end of the ladder collecting from other dead-beats who buy on credit from Pay-E-Zee Stores. Trying to make ends meet by skimming off his accounts things start to catch up with him when he meets Mona, a beautiful young woman who is being abused by her aunt. When he hears her story Frank promises to help, especially when he hears he could get his hands on a sizeable chunk of loot into the bargain to go along with Mona.This is a dark tale of paranoia, sex and crime with characters not even a mother could love. I would have given it a higher rating but for the ending. I didn't appreciate having to read it about 4 times to actually understand what went on.
    • 4/5
      Dolly Dillon is a poor sucker trying to hustle a meager living as a salesman/collector for Pay-E-Zee. He deals with bums trying to stiff the company on a daily basis. Then he meets helpless Mona and her pimping aunt. Suddenly Dolly doesn't feel so worthless because Mona is counting on Dolly to come up with some dough and take her away. He only needs to get rid of his lazy slob of a wife and that creepy, needling boss, Staples.