Nobody Move

National Book Award–winner Denis Johnson dives into the noir underworlds of Jim Thompson and James Ellroy with Nobody Move, a fast-moving novel filled with bad people with worse ideas, and fueled with dialogue that pops like a busted nose.
›Nobody Move by Denis Johnso

From Booklist
After Tree of Smoke (2007), Johnson’s meaty (and National Book Award–winning) Vietnam opus, this slim crime novel, first published serially in the pages of Playboy, might seem a mere digestif—but, if so, it’s a drink for someone who likes to knock back three fingers of whiskey after a drive-through dinner of cheeseburgers and fries. Set in the margins of California’s Central Valley, a milieu that in some ways recalls Already Dead (1997), this pinballing tale concerns Jimmy Luntz, a compulsive gambler who owes money; Gambol, Juarez, and the Tall Man, the loan sharks who want to collect; and Anita Desilvera, an alcoholic knockout plotting to steal the money she’s been framed for embezzling. Revenge-minded lowlifes clawing for cash constitute a classic crime trope but, as with the most satisfying crime fiction, plot is tertiary to character and setting. Readers won’t know who will win—Will it be the ballsy gambler or the psycho who wants to eat the gambler’s balls?—indeed, they may not even know who they’re rooting for. But getting there is all the fun, with dry dialogue and surprising turns of phrase all adding up to something that seems both fresh and inevitable. Fans of Jim Thompson, Elmore Leonard, Barry Gifford, and even David Lynch (who, after all, filmed Gifford’s Wild at Heart) will all find something to savor. --Keir Graff

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