The Rip-Off (Mulholland Classic) by Jim Thompson

The Rip-Off (Mulholland Classic) Reviews

• 
  Glenn Russell

  
  
  The Rip-Off by Jim Thompson tops the list as the pulpiest pulp fiction novel ever written. You want rock 'em sock 'em action? You want crisp dialogue that crackles and pops? Here you go in spades, baby.
  
  Jim Thompson hits his main character Britton Rainstar with so many problems, dilemmas, challenges and conflicts, it's as if the author wanted to push the boundaries of crime noir to the point of goofiness, just to see how much he could get away with.
  
  Listening to the audio book, I had the distinct feeling Jim Thompson shoved the Rip-Off manuscript in his bottom drawer and intended it to stay there. Thompson died in 1967 and Rip-Off didn't see the light of publication until 1989, twenty-two years after Jim's death. Did someone controlling the Thompson estate want to cash in on another Jim Thompson novel? I wouldn't be shocked - the lure of money can be so tempting.
  
  I wonder if Jim Thompson laughed out loud while working on Rip-Off. Many the time I myself laughed at all the silliness. However, In a backhanded way, I'm glad I did listen - Jim Thompson's bleak nihilism rumbles forth and the tale does pack wads of kooky, fast-paced, pulpy punch.
  
  Will Brit Rainstar survive the snarling attack dog at the side of his bed, or three different women who appear to be out to kill him, or the skeleton in his backyard chasing him with a gun? Take a break from more serious reading to rip-off this Jim Thompson black sheep.
  
  
  American crime novelist Jim Thompson, 1906-1977
• 
  Algernon (Darth Anyan)

  [5/10]
  Everything all right, Britt?
  Absolutely perfect, I said bitterly. How else could it be for a guy with a schizoid wife, and a paranoid girlfriend? If one of them can't send me to prison or the electric chair, the other will put me in the nuthouse or the morgue!
  
  Britton Rainstar is in a fine mess, but frankly no more than he deserves. Heir to a famous Native American name, son of a university professor hunted by the McCarthysts, owner of a once luxurious, now dillapidated mansion, he is out of work, pennyless and mixed in some seriously unhealthy love affairs.
  
  No one wants trouble, dammitt, but you don't avoid it by turning your back on it. The more you run, the more you have chasing you, scolds detective Claggett, possibly the only person who isn't trying to profit from Britton Rainstar's weaknesses. The bank repossessed his car, the insurance company is burying him in late payment charges and penalities, the city council put a garbage dump on his property, his wife might press murder charges on him if he stops sending her blood money and his new girfriend just set a killer doberman on him in an access of jealousy.
  
  Britt response to all these troubles? Absolutely nothing. He puts his head in the sand, crosses his arms and waits for the the issue to go away. The author explains his atitude as protective camouflage, as an intelligent man hiding his talents in order to avoid notice and to stay out of trouble, but I was unconvinced, and for a novel presented in the first person, this lack of enthusiasm for the main narrator has a major negative impact on my overall rating. I also found the prose generally lacklustre and too liberal with the swear words, but that may be an aftereffect of my annoyance with Britt's passivity. ( Any damage you do, I imagine, is the result of not doing; just letting things slide. You don't have the initiative to deliberately hurt anyone. says the same Claggett). Britt is goofy where I was expecting a tragic victim of persecution, and maybe a better way to enjoy the novel is to look at it as an example of screwball comedy instead of existentialist noir. The final confrontation between the cowardly and clueless Britt and his tormentors sure qualifies as hilarious. If that was the intention of the author, than my rating is too low. If I was meant to take things seriously, my rating is too high.
  
  Still, I want to give Jim Thompson another chance, and for that I would go for his highest rated novel here: The Killer Inside Me.
• 
  Guillermo Galvan

  I was hesitant about reading The Rip Off because of everyone on here claiming how much it sucked. Well, after reading it I can definitely say it is only they who are doing the sucking.
  
  This book cracked me up! I had to do a fake cough several times to cover up my laughter. Thompson knows how to write dialogue. It's witty, original, and occasionally outrageous. Likewise is the cast of desperate characters who are big enough to speak them.
  
  The biggest gripe against this book is that it's lacking the blood and guts violence from his other novels. Ok, that I will give to you. There isn't very much violence, it's more of a flirtation with disaster. It's refreshing to see Thompson write a hard-boiled comedy without dumping a bucket of blood on top.
  
  The plot is a little so-so, but as Stephen King says about plot: "The good writer's last resort and the dullard's first choice." What makes this book shine are the character interactions and risky situations.
  
  Good pulp doesn't have to be all gore.
  
  
• 
  Jake

  Makes sense that the Year of Jim Thompson coincided with the Year of our Lord 2020 because both have been mostly duds. His lesser works are just bad. This might not have been as painful as The Golden Gizmo or The Alcoholics but it's an uninspired Double Indemnity knockoff that Thompson wrote near the end of his life. Bad. Bad. Bad.
• 
  Ethan

  Jim Thompson's final novel is light in consideration of his past work, but this is certainly no swan song. As usual, Thompson's characters are fully intriguing and interesting. Britt's unreliability and the way in which the author carefully persuades the perspective of the antagonist kept me guessing until the end. Thompson doesn't seem to mind having all of the women in his novel be portrayed as neurotic or unstable: Connie is an invalid always asking for money, Mrs. Oldmstead slowly cheats Britt, Manny is always secretive of her hospital stays, and I could never quite tell how his in-home nurse could practically blush on command. While pretty women all seem to have a femme fatale way of attracting our protagonist, the downside of all of this is how they all seem to give in to Britt's commands, how they never seem to defy him and if they do, apologize immediately for their trespasses. It's almost uncomfortable at times for how strangely, and sexually, fantastical the dialogue and romanticized weeping would seem.
  There are three women specifically in Britt's life: Connie, Manny, and Kay. This may seem like quite a lot of women to deal with in one story, and in truth it is. Nothing seems to bind their narratives together aside from Britt, who is the love interest. Aside from that, the mysteries are separate, and only intertwine at the last possible minute in what is an admittedly fantastically thought out and comic struggle. Because the stories are on their own, they also fall victim to quick cover-ups and explanations. Some may say a part of that is the pulp style, but I think pulp works better with being spare in explanation, rawer and with less justification and more action. When the story is so quickly explained, it makes the action look ridiculous. As a more lighthearted book, perhaps that's the point. I just can't say it worked for me.
  Aside from my qualms, I can't say I didn't enjoy the novel in all of its ridiculousness.
  
• 
  Guy Salvidge

  Jim Thompson is a fascinating writer but boy is he uneven. I think this is the twenty-first of his twenty-seven novels I've read, and it may be the worst. It's so bad that it comes across as self-parody, only I don't think it is. The kindest thing I can say about it was that it was worth a few chuckles here and there. But the plotting, characterisation and writing are lamentable.
• 
  Jon

  Maybe two and a half stars, but it seemed like an experiment that Thompson purposely never published when he was alive. It came out a decade after his death. The book felt like it didn't know whether it was a noir novel of mayhem or a farcical comedy. The hero was so feckless that even when he was in danger I didn't really care. And the femmes fatales were just silly. I got few smiles, but the jokes were so off-hand that I was never sure they were intended.
• 
  Richard Schaefer

  The Rip-Off, a posthumously published Thompson novel, is the author in his humorous mode, which is hit or miss at best. The plot concerns a classic noir sucker who is the target of someone’s nefarious plot… or is he just paranoid?! You know the drill… this one was clearly written well past Thompson’s peak, and the humor tends to fall pretty flat; the main character’s credulous nature strains believability and detracts from his depth of personality. The murder attempts are absurd even by pulp standards, and the central love triangle is a tough sell. I’ve yet to meet a Thompson book that isn’t a quick read, so at least it has that in its favor. But all in all, the Rip-Off probably would have stayed on the cutting room floor (or whatever the equivalent is for novelists) if Thompson had been alive to weigh in.
• 
  Michael Meeuwis

  Wow: this one is crazy, even by Big Jim standards. One damn thing after another, and a female urination fetish throughout. Something like a mystery, only without humans acting as humans do, and a surprise killer who wears makeup, may look like a goblin, and comes completely from out of nowhere. Also, the narrator is Native American, but to what end I find it impossible to guess. (Not that there needs to be an end to being a Native American, but he talks about it so frequently that I thought the book might do--well, something with it. Unless the whole thing is some sort of allegory for the American treatment of natives, in which case, ugh.)
  
  This one really hammers home the "preposterous" in "preposterously entertaining."
• 
  Ty Wilson

  This is a strange one. Not what I expected at all. A novel filled with characters that are more than a little off kilter. Britt Rainstar has a wife he left behind and a girlfriend that wants to be his wife. Oh, and his girlfriend is playing sadistic games with him, and just might be trying to kill him. How Britt ended up in this mess is quite a meandering tale and maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this much humor with my pulp. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't what I would call great by any stretch of the imagination.
• 
  Bobbi

  What a mess this guy is constantly getting himself into, and he doesn't ever have the spine to get himself out!I liked him anyway. It seems like everyone is out to get him, but there's a sinister cast to the whole thing that kept me riveted to find out what was actually going on. The strangest thing about it is this guy is broke, has nothing at all - the motivation for everything kept me puzzled right up until the end. But it's a strange book, with a strange flavor that I really (perhaps unexpectedly) enjoyed.
• 
  Christina

  I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Had heard it was not one of his best, but when I got around to reading it, I loved it. The ending is a little slipshod, but as is typical with Thompson, the first-person narrator is great, the twists and turns are freaky and satisfying, and there are some fantastic one-liners. Read it! And yes, the cover (pictured here, by Vintage) actually figures into the story.
• 
  Mauricio

  Most of the reviews of this book label it just average. The Rip-Off was my introduction to Jim Thompson and so I this title will always have a special place on my bookshelf. Jim Thompson is not unique in writing Crime Fiction, he just seems to do it better and with seemingly less effort than anyone else. I really liked and connected with the main character and, as always, the ending really threw me for a loop.
• 
  Nicky Billou

  An utterly absorbing book, one I couldn't put down!
• 
  Adam McPhee

  Published posthumously in 1988, feels out of place in the Thompson canon. Trying too hard to be modern or contemporary in some ways.
  
  Jokey in a way that doesn't work, leaves you wondering 'who cares?' instead of 'who dunnit?' He ends up staying with the wrong woman (should've chose the cop, not the heiress). And also there's some racism.
  
  Should've had more stuff on soil erosion. And rezoning the city dump to his private property was clever. Literal ratfucking.
• 
  Vel Veeter

  Probably the least good and least fun Jim Thompson book I've read now, having read about 10 or so. The book takes what works with his books in the past (pushing boundaries in terms of sex and violence while also keeping things fairly in check) and because this is the late 1980s and more or less anything goes, breaks through what used to be boundaries into what's now kind of banal. Worse, this fake pushing through the boundaries turns the book into a kind of anachronism. There's a kind of "whoa, look at what we're doing here" that works so well in the older books, and feels stale and boring here, in part because the taboo isn't hinted at, it's blown by. The result is mess of cliché and trope that makes the book ultimately not very interesting. This is me almost exclusively comparing the book to other Jim Thompson books, and looking at how the writer might have tried to deal with the changing context of the country in his writing, and then not really.
  
• 
  Reet

  I got 54 pages into this, and I cannot, absolutely cannot, read anymore. This is the most disgusting, misogynistic book I think I have ever read. The author's hatred for women comes through loud and clear, and his attitude that men can do whatever they want to women, and get away with it, and have whatever opinions about them, and get away with it, comes through disgustingly loud.
• 
  Michael

  Did not like this. Chose not to finish it.
• 
  Freddie Sykes

  What a rip-off. Total bait and bite.
• 
  DRugh

  A fast page turning, light beach read with an improbable plot.
• 
  Marco

  An exhilarating take on crime novels. An over-the-top plot with Thompson's usual mastery of characters, phobias and language.
• 
  Christopher Ryan

  What a horrid little book. I deserve a medal for slogging through this facetious, hard-to-swallow, plotless, grim, and downright silly story.
• 
  Ernie

  Pulp fiction.
• 
  Jason McCracken

  DNF. I honestly couldn't tell if this was unfunny comedy or an awfully written crime novel... But what I do know is that you probably shouldn't read books released years after the authors death by his or her money hungry family.
• 
  Daniel

  Apparently, some people are so uninteresting that virtually everyone they know begins to hate them. They dawdle along in the world being pushovers that are a little too far to the side of pathetic and so the hatred in those around them grows until it boils over into a kind of murderous rage. Don't understand how that can happen? Me neither. Not really.
  
  Thompson could be up to his old unreliable narrator tricks again, but I don't think it carries the water it usually does for him this go around. At least, not enough to explain the strange goings on that fill the pages of this book.
  
  While a story where pretty much everyone turns out to be the villain is an interesting idea, I'm just not sure it played out that well in this case. It served to keep you guessing since clues led in so many directions and I'd say I ended up liking, but certainly not loving, the overall work.
  
  I will give points to Thompson for finally writing a book where everything doesn't always go terribly for the narrator. That was a kind of surprise all it's own.
  
  A good read for people who want to read them all, but if you haven't read
  The Killer Inside Me,
  The Grifters,
  Pop. 1280, or
  After Dark, My Sweet, I definitely recommend you start with one (or more) of those.
• 
  Bob Mackey

  Published for the first time long after his death, The Rip-Off is hardly essential Thompson, and lacks the bite of his more well-known novels. Still, there's something to be said about his more madcap books, and The Rip-Off is up there with The Golden Gizmo as one of Thompson's more cartoonish stories. The plot follows Britt Rainstar, a down-on-his-luck writer (Thompson always wrote what he knew) who, in a seeming parody of pulp novels, meets a femme fatale and suffers multiple attempts on his life by a mysterious assailant as he begins working for an enigmatic corporation. I'm not entirely sure if Thompson intended for The Rip-Off to be serialized—as that's how it was originally published—but it reads as if was.
  
  The story is propelled by wild twists and cliffhangers, and while some of them feel somewhat unearned, these moments give the novel an excellent pace, as the narrator is propelled from event to event without much say in things. Overall, it's a light, enjoyable read, though Thompson often stoops to crudeness instead of opting for the clever innuendo of his previous works. The Rip-Off did teach me the expression "tighter than a popcorn fart," though, so I guess the uninspired vulgarity isn't ALL bad.
• 
  Katy

  This is really a novella. Relatively complex plotting that is so unbelievable it is clearly written for laughs. A few key plot elements are inexplicable-like why PXA hires the main character and pays him so much money. This book is more of a sendup of the noir genre than anything else. It doesn't have the emotional grit and psychological depth of Thompson's best work. It does have the usual women characters with borderline personality and antisocial disorders and main male character who can't look after himself. Don't start with this Thompson book if you've never read one before, but overall it's enjoyable.
• 
  Tom Stamper

  This is a very tame novel by Jim Thompson standards which explains its posthumous publication. The gun on the cover is misleading and even the dog on other covers is a bit overstated. It's a story of a talented writer who doesn't understand women despite their attraction to him. After a period of unfortunate accidents its seems obvious that someone is trying to kill him. What he does with this information is at times comic hopefully intentionally. Except for a scene early in the novel and the denouement there just isn't much suspense. It has the feeling of an early effort where sparks of talent escape from an otherwise middling whole.