"The Big Caper" by Lionel White is first-class hardboiled crime fiction. Make no mistake about that. Like White's novel, "The Killing" (aka "Clean Break"), "The Big Caper" is the story of how a criminal mastermind plots a crime by bringing together a team of individuals. Here, it's a bank robbery in a small Florida town. Flood, the ringleader, pulls together a crew of characters from all walks of life in order to pull of a well-planned down to the most minute detail. As such and because of the sparse, stripped-down prose, it has a similar feel to many of Donald Westlake's Parker novels, although White published "The Big Caper" in 1955, a decade before many any of the Parker novels came out.

In this book, White's writing is not flowery. His writing is detailed, but is written in such a stark manner that the details flow through the writing naturally, not as an added enhancement. It is told in a matter- of-fact manner. And, this style of writing, at least in White's hands, is top-notch and establishes his place as one of the top crime fiction writers of the fifties and sixties.

The heart of this book is not the plot, which is not terribly complex or hard to understand. Rather, the meat of the book is about the characters that Flood brings together to pull off this caper. Flood is the ringleader and he has been gathering people for quite some time just because he might need them for such a caper. Unfortunately for Flood, these people are characters and they act and interact in ways that are sometimes detrimental to the caper that he planned.

Kosta was the explosives man. He had unusually large eyes of "an odd russet brown and they bulged out from their sockets." They reminded one "somewhat of the eyes of a very sick person or a sick animal." He was short and obese. Frank Gerald Harper and Kay were assigned the task of establishing themselves in a rented house, pretending to be a married, square couple, blending into the town and casing the bank and the police department. Harper had leased a gas station and made friends with everyone in town.

Kay "looked exactly like what everyone that they knew in Indio Beach believed she was - - the young, extremely attractive wife of a nice- looking ex-Marine." She was only supposed to play a part with Harper since Kay had been Flood's mistress for the last four years. Despite her connection to Flood, she never knew whether he was married or where he spent his time when he was away from her. The safecracker was Hans Paulmeyer, an old man "well past seventy" and "set in his ways." This was going to be his last job and, when it was done, he would take the train home and sit on the porch and wait for death.

Rounding out the group pulling off this caper was Roy Cluney, who had the "round, half-formed face of a baby" and small ears set close to his head. Cluney's buddy, Wally, barely has any more sense than Cluney. While waiting for the caper to start, Cluney read comic books with his lips moving laboriously as he spelled out each word. There was also Candle, who was a big man with a hard face, and Shorty.

Of course, none of these people are as interesting as Flood himself, James Xavier Flood to be precise.
Lionel White knows how to spin a yarn. That much is true. ( )

White is a very reliable writer of compelling pulp fiction. Like some of his other books, this concerns the planning and aftermath of a large crime. Here, however, the focus is different. The well-drawn cast of characters, rather than the caper, is at the center of this book. The protagonist owes the planner of the heist a lot and feels personal loyalty even while disliking him. The fact that he has fallen in love with the boss's mistress isn't helping matters. The boss himself is very interesting--intelligent, but also ruthless. The other characters range from rather admirable professional criminals who know their jobs and do them well to borderline (both sides of the border!) psychopaths. White brings them all together, along with the local townspeople in a small community on Florida's Atlantic coast, for a very compelling, page-turning, quick read that doesn't fall into the kind of predictability some tales like this have. As a writer, White only occasionally overdoes it. Most of his prose is clean, well-written, and to the point. Highly recommended. (Please see my reviews of some of his other books--all are recommended.) ( )