THE BURGLAR by David Goodis

This novel by David Goodis follows Nat Harbin, a man leading a Philadelphia burglary gang. He's efficient and professional, and is  dedicated to protecting Gladden, the daughter of a dead friend and  

a member of his crew. But things get complicated once the mysterious Della comes into his life.

Lean, mean, and terribly bleak, once this story starts moving it's pretty hard to break away from it until it's haunting ending! This ending is one of the best I've ever read. This was my first novel by the nearly forgotten David Goodis and it won't be my last.

Example of Goodis's poetic bleakness:

“He couldn’t speak. The thing that crushed down on him was the sum weight of all the years, and her voice was a lance cutting through it, breaking it all up and showing him it added up to nothing but a horrible joke he had played on himself.”

GRADE: A-