Kenneth Fearing

George Stroud is a hard-drinking, tough-talking, none-too-scrupulous writer for a New York media conglomerate that bears a striking resemblance to Time, Inc. in the heyday of Henry Luce. One day, before heading home to his wife in the suburbs, Stroud has a drink with Pauline, the beautiful girlfriend of his boss, Earl Janoth. Things happen. The next day Stroud escorts Pauline home, leaving her off at the corner just as Janoth returns from a trip. The day after that, Pauline is found murdered in her apartment. Janoth knows there was one witness to his entry into Pauline's apartment on the night of the murder; he knows that man must have been the man Pauline was with before he got back; but he doesn't know who he was. Janoth badly wants to get his hands on that man, and he picks one of his most trusted employees to track him down: George Stroud, who else? How does a man escape from himself? No book has ever dramatized that question to more perfect effect than "The Big Clock," a masterpiece of American noir.

George Stroud, executive editor at Crimeways magazine, is involved with the wrong woman - his boss's. When Janoth, the boss, kills her in an argument, he tries to pin the crime on a man seen outside her home just before the murder. He assigns his best investigative reporter - Stroud - to find the man. Trouble is, the man was Stroud himself... An audacious and ironic novel of terror and high tension.

Considerada por diversos críticos una de las mejores novelas negras jamás escritas, El gran reloj sigue sorprendiendo en la actualidad por su estructura, por su atípico uso del lenguaje, por su crítica al capitalismo y, en definitiva, por su modernidad. George Stroud es editor de una revista de un importante grupo editorial y un orgulloso padre de familia, aunque tambien es aficionado al alcohol y a las mujeres mas alla de lo recomendable para la salud. A causa de sus vicios no tarda en descubrir que tener una pequeña aventura con la atractiva amante de su jefe puede, ademas deamenazar su hogar y su carrera profesional, poner en peligro su vida. Su futuro dependera de como juegue las cartas que le ha repartido la fortuna en una extraña mano en la que al mismo tiempo sera cazador y presa. Los personajes de esta novela unica, narrada en primera persona por diferentes voces, descubriran que el mecanismo de ese gran reloj que marca sus destinos avanza inexorablemente y nadie puede hacer nada para detenerlo.Todavia estoy un tanto asombrado de como es que no ha aparecido nadie que me haya dejado en evidencia. Pero excepto algun tour de force ocasional como El gran reloj, no ha salido nadie. Raymond Chandler