The Asphalt Jungle by W.R. Burnett
Originally published in 1949.
A heist novel masquerading as a social novel–this book opens with chapters on police corruption, police/media relations, and the honorable work that cops do while responding to the never-ending reports of domestic violence and petty theft. It then takes a sudden turn to focus exclusively on an assortment of not-quite-low lives who band together to pull off a jewel robbery. Their story unfolds in much the same way as an Elmore Leonard plot—-things go wrong, double-crossing occurs, and the crooks make strange decisions which lead to their arrests or deaths.
This was great fodder for the movies, and a year after its publication John Huston filmed a magnificent noir based on it. In 1958 it would be again adapted, this time as a western called “The Badlanders.”
The book’s hero is an older German heist wizard known as the Doctor. Near the novel’s climax is a scene that could have been lifted from Nabokov’s “Lolita” (had it been written yet.) The Doc, on the lam, stops at a malt shop, gives jukebox nickels to a young girl and watches her dance seductively for him while the police close in outside. (This scene is also featured in Huston’s film, though in the role of the young girl he cast a 21 year actress who looks closer to 30.)
While this is a tightly constructed thriller, I wonder about the Problem Novel framing. Especially when contemporaneous novels like “Man With the Golden Arm” were treating actual social problems like drug addiction, gambling and prostitution. Were jewel heists so common in the late 40s?