Obsession by Lionel White

"A gripping story of a man who destroyed himself... in an obsession with a girl half his age." Conrad Madden rebels against his humdrum life in this slow-burn thriller.

Married to Marta, with a suburban house and two disdainful kids, he has been out of work for months but usually drinks the day away in New York bars. One night, they attend a neighborhood party (for drunks and swingers), with a friend providing Allie, the babysitter. After driving the seventeen-year-old back to her furnished apartment, she invites him up for a nightcap. He doesn't know what he is walking into. Waking up hungover the next morning amidst empty bottles, she tells him Marta came looking for him, telling him not to return after finding them in bed together. There is also a man on the couch—stabbed through the chest. He was a boyfriend and bagman for the mob, and on the table is a case filled with $16,000. They have no choice but to run. In South Carolina, they change their looks and identities, now assumed to be a well-to-do married couple, members of the golf club. But Allie cannot be tamed. They leave it behind for Florida, where a man recognizes Allie from the past. To keep him quiet, Allie goes to his home, calling in the middle of the night for Conrad to join her. There he encounters murder and the mob, beaten and left for dead with Allie nowhere to be found.

You would think after escaping with his life, he would forget her. Instead, he tracks her into the exciting third section of the story. She is living large in Las Vegas with a man she calls her brother, Joel Rocco, the moneyman for The Egyptian. They have a bold plan to rob the casino of its fortune and include him as a third. They actually pull off this 'foolproof' plan, before everything goes south and Conrad finds himself on the outside once again. But they have underestimated him; he is not the man he once was. A thief and a murderer, with no money and an obsession, he has nothing left to lose. The future doesn't exist; there is only the present.

Lionel White has been called "the master of the big caper" - his novel Clean Break adapted into the 1956 Stanley Kubrick film The Killing, and The Snatchers filmed in 1968 as The Night of the Following Day with Marlon Brando. Quentin Tarantino credits White for inspiring his 1992 Reservoir Dogs. Obsession was the basis for the 1965 Jean-Luc Godard film Pierrot le fou.

The writing elevates this novel, with my only complaint of the transitions between the three 'sections' being smoother fading away. Overall, a complete package I recommend to classic thriller lovers, leaving me with the delicious taste of a happy (?) ending.

Darkly satisfying.

1962 / Paperback / 144 pages