What do you think?
Rate this book
The Tiger Among Us
From the screenwriter for STAR THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, THE BIG SLEEP, and RIO BRAVO... Walter Sherris -- successful, happy, good husband and father -- made just one he took a walk along a dark road one night. Without warning, a car raced towards him and screeched to a stop; out piled five young men intent on violence. To the accompaniment of wild brainless laughter, Walter Sherris was beaten to the ground. He awoke in a hospital nine days later. And from that moment his pleasant life became a nightmare, more horrible than those he had wrestled with in those nine days of unconsciousness. Walter Sherris wanted for the broken leg and the pain; for the doubts he now had about his pretty young wife; and for the countless and nameless others who had been mauled by the thrill seekers, the sadists, the compulsive slayers . . . the tigers loose in a tame suburban world. The police were evasive, almost disinterested. There were no witnesses. So Walter Sherris set out alone to trap the tiger. The Tiger Among Us was filmed as 13 West Street (starring Alan Ladd).
191 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
About the author
Leigh Brackett
402 books246 followersLeigh Brackett was born on December 7, 1915 in Los Angeles, and raised near Santa Monica. Having spent her youth as an athletic tom-boy - playing volleyball and reading stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H Rider Haggard - she began writing fantastic adventures of her own. Several of these early efforts were read by Henry Kuttner, who critiqued her stories and introduced her to the SF personalities then living in California, including Robert Heinlein, Julius Schwartz, Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton - and another aspiring writer, Ray Bradbury.
In 1944, based on the hard-boiled dialogue in her first novel, No Good From a Corpse, producer/director Howard Hawks hired Brackett to collaborate with William Faulkner on the screenplay of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.
Brackett maintained an on-again/off-again relationship with Hollywood for the remainder of her life. Between writing screenplays for such films as Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Hatari!, and The Long Goodbye, she produced novels such as the classic The Long Tomorrow (1955) and the Spur Award-winning Western, Follow the Free Wind (1963).
Brackett married Edmond Hamilton on New Year's Eve in 1946, and the couple maintained homes in the high-desert of California and the rural farmland of Kinsman, Ohio.
Just weeks before her death on March 17, 1978, she turned in the first draft screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back and the film was posthumously dedicated to her.
In 1944, based on the hard-boiled dialogue in her first novel, No Good From a Corpse, producer/director Howard Hawks hired Brackett to collaborate with William Faulkner on the screenplay of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.
Brackett maintained an on-again/off-again relationship with Hollywood for the remainder of her life. Between writing screenplays for such films as Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Hatari!, and The Long Goodbye, she produced novels such as the classic The Long Tomorrow (1955) and the Spur Award-winning Western, Follow the Free Wind (1963).
Brackett married Edmond Hamilton on New Year's Eve in 1946, and the couple maintained homes in the high-desert of California and the rural farmland of Kinsman, Ohio.
Just weeks before her death on March 17, 1978, she turned in the first draft screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back and the film was posthumously dedicated to her.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 6, 2023
The Tiger Among Us is a noir crime novel that was published in 1957. It was filmed in 1962 as 13 West Street, and the paperback I picked up has that title. I have not seen the film (which Brackett was quoted as saying was "very, very dull"), and it's interesting that she did not write the screenplay herself as in her career she worked on scripts such as The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, The Long Goodbye, and The Empire Strikes Back. I didn't think that the novel was dull, but it is very, very bleak and depressing. There are no strong or likeable characters. It's the story of an average middle-class man who is badly beaten by a gang of juvenile delinquents for no reason other than they have fun doing it. As he recovers, he comes to believe the over-worked police aren't going to find the criminals and so he resolves to find them and bring them to justice himself, despite the danger to his marriage, work, and life that it causes. The novel is set, interestingly, in a small Northeastern Ohio town, and shows the societal problems aren't limited to coastal cities. There's a somewhat dogmatic ending that summarizes the problems and depressingly concludes that there are no good solutions. It's a well-written story, but I think I'll stick to her space operas from now on.
March 13, 2022
The Tiger Among Us by American author Leigh Brackett. From what I've read she was best known as the 'Queen of the Space Opera' but was also a script writer; The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, and she also wrote crime fiction, The Tiger Among Us being one such. It was also turned into a movie, 13 West Street.
Walter Sherris is a middle-aged accountant, a family man with two young children and a lovely wife. He is working late at his company one night finalizing financial statements and decides to take a break and go for a walk and to get a coffee down the road. While walking down a dark alley, he is accosted by 5 young men and viciously assaulted. He ends up with a broken leg and is in a coma for nine days. His wife indicates she has received a threatening letter from the attackers and leaves town with the children, heading to relatives in Boston.
When Walter wakes up he finds the police have little to nothing to go on. There have been attacks in recent days of alcoholic derelicts (the attack on Walter seems to have been a mistake, as the 'boys' thought he was such a derelict). So Walter begins his own investigation.
Thus begins a tense, thrilling story as Walter tries to find clues to give to the police, in the person of Detective Koleski, who is frustrated in his own investigation and trying to keep Walter out of the whole thing. It's a fascinating, dark noir thriller as Walter investigates the attack, tries to find motives for the attack and analyses his own actions. What is he looking for; revenge, justification, trying to get his own life back in order? It's a well-written story. The characters are well-drawn, even minor ones like Noddy, the bartender who assists Walter and the story moves along nicely and with increasing tension and excitement. It's also a very thoughtful story, the characters are three-dimensional and there is an attempt at insight for everyone's actions. I will continue to explore
Brackett's writing as I have some of her SciFi on my bookshelves now (4.5 stars)
Walter Sherris is a middle-aged accountant, a family man with two young children and a lovely wife. He is working late at his company one night finalizing financial statements and decides to take a break and go for a walk and to get a coffee down the road. While walking down a dark alley, he is accosted by 5 young men and viciously assaulted. He ends up with a broken leg and is in a coma for nine days. His wife indicates she has received a threatening letter from the attackers and leaves town with the children, heading to relatives in Boston.
When Walter wakes up he finds the police have little to nothing to go on. There have been attacks in recent days of alcoholic derelicts (the attack on Walter seems to have been a mistake, as the 'boys' thought he was such a derelict). So Walter begins his own investigation.
Thus begins a tense, thrilling story as Walter tries to find clues to give to the police, in the person of Detective Koleski, who is frustrated in his own investigation and trying to keep Walter out of the whole thing. It's a fascinating, dark noir thriller as Walter investigates the attack, tries to find motives for the attack and analyses his own actions. What is he looking for; revenge, justification, trying to get his own life back in order? It's a well-written story. The characters are well-drawn, even minor ones like Noddy, the bartender who assists Walter and the story moves along nicely and with increasing tension and excitement. It's also a very thoughtful story, the characters are three-dimensional and there is an attempt at insight for everyone's actions. I will continue to explore
Brackett's writing as I have some of her SciFi on my bookshelves now (4.5 stars)
July 19, 2014
"Verbrechen. Man liest jeden Tag davon."
Eines nachts wird Walter Sherris grundlos von einer fünfköpfigen Jugendgruppe angegriffen und so zusammengeschlagen, dass er in Lebensgefahr schwebt.
Sherris erholt sich von dem Überfall und hat fortan nur noch ein Ziel: die jungen Männer ausfindig zu machen und dafür zu Sorgen, dass sie ihre Strafe bekommen.
THE TIGER AMONG US (so der Originaltitel) thematisiert das Problem der Jugendkriminalität, vor allem aber legt Brackett den Fokus auf das Opfer und auf die Frage, welche Folgen eine derartige Tat für Familie und Psyche haben und wie damit umgegangen wird.
ICH WAR DAS OPFER ist kein spektakulärer Thriller und aus heutiger Sicht haben manche Passagen einen leicht pathetischen oder sogar naiven Anklang. Das liegt vermutlich daran, dass wir heute angesichts grundloser Gewalttaten weniger überrascht und dafür bedauerlicher Weise abgeklärter reagieren.
Brackett schildert das Geschehen sehr glaubwürdig, und vor allem die sorgsame Beschäftigung mit der Frage, wie das Opfer zurück in die Normalität finden kann - eine Frage, die auch in der heutigen Strafverfolgung viel zu sehr ausgeblendet wird - macht den Roman sehr sympathisch und lesenswert. Und, wie man es von einem Krimi erwarten kann, ist ICH WAR DAS OPFER auch über weite Strecken spannend geschrieben.
Ein über 60 Jahre alter Krimi, der nicht altmodisch wirkt, denn das Problem gewalttätiger Jugendgruppen ist heute so aktuell wie damals, genau wie die Fragen nach dem Warum und nach mangelnder Zivilcourage.
Eines nachts wird Walter Sherris grundlos von einer fünfköpfigen Jugendgruppe angegriffen und so zusammengeschlagen, dass er in Lebensgefahr schwebt.
Sherris erholt sich von dem Überfall und hat fortan nur noch ein Ziel: die jungen Männer ausfindig zu machen und dafür zu Sorgen, dass sie ihre Strafe bekommen.
THE TIGER AMONG US (so der Originaltitel) thematisiert das Problem der Jugendkriminalität, vor allem aber legt Brackett den Fokus auf das Opfer und auf die Frage, welche Folgen eine derartige Tat für Familie und Psyche haben und wie damit umgegangen wird.
ICH WAR DAS OPFER ist kein spektakulärer Thriller und aus heutiger Sicht haben manche Passagen einen leicht pathetischen oder sogar naiven Anklang. Das liegt vermutlich daran, dass wir heute angesichts grundloser Gewalttaten weniger überrascht und dafür bedauerlicher Weise abgeklärter reagieren.
Brackett schildert das Geschehen sehr glaubwürdig, und vor allem die sorgsame Beschäftigung mit der Frage, wie das Opfer zurück in die Normalität finden kann - eine Frage, die auch in der heutigen Strafverfolgung viel zu sehr ausgeblendet wird - macht den Roman sehr sympathisch und lesenswert. Und, wie man es von einem Krimi erwarten kann, ist ICH WAR DAS OPFER auch über weite Strecken spannend geschrieben.
Ein über 60 Jahre alter Krimi, der nicht altmodisch wirkt, denn das Problem gewalttätiger Jugendgruppen ist heute so aktuell wie damals, genau wie die Fragen nach dem Warum und nach mangelnder Zivilcourage.
February 9, 2019
Average Man Walter Sherris is severely beaten by five boys in a seemingly random attack and is gravely injured. His recovery is slow and he spends it enduring his humiliation, experiencing doubts about his wife who may have deserted him in his time of need and engaging in an increasingly frustratingly and perhaps hopeless quest to locate his attackers.
As might be expected from Brackett, the book is more than a simple revenge tale as it examines the psychological impact on Sherris: the normal feelings of shame and bitterness experienced by a victim of violent crime are soon accompanied by a horror that results from realizing that there is no understanding "the tiger" - a human being that may appear normal outside, but nurturing the monster within. Brackett offers no facile answers; she would probably have laughed at today's concept of "closure", a "modern" device invented more to comfort those dealing with a victim than the victims themselves: the crime is solved, the criminal is locked up, time to feel "right" again. Glad that's over. Right.
Sherris at first believes that by catching up with his attackers, he will be able to heal his wounds and come to terms with how such an event could have been perpetrated by his fellow human beings in the first place. The plausibility of the resolution to his psychological suffering is something the reader will have to ponder: is Sherrill "healed" or is he using philosophy to distance himself from the bogeyman?
Yet another fine book from this period where we suspect that the character is taking one position while the author may actually believe something quite different.
As might be expected from Brackett, the book is more than a simple revenge tale as it examines the psychological impact on Sherris: the normal feelings of shame and bitterness experienced by a victim of violent crime are soon accompanied by a horror that results from realizing that there is no understanding "the tiger" - a human being that may appear normal outside, but nurturing the monster within. Brackett offers no facile answers; she would probably have laughed at today's concept of "closure", a "modern" device invented more to comfort those dealing with a victim than the victims themselves: the crime is solved, the criminal is locked up, time to feel "right" again. Glad that's over. Right.
Sherris at first believes that by catching up with his attackers, he will be able to heal his wounds and come to terms with how such an event could have been perpetrated by his fellow human beings in the first place. The plausibility of the resolution to his psychological suffering is something the reader will have to ponder: is Sherrill "healed" or is he using philosophy to distance himself from the bogeyman?
Yet another fine book from this period where we suspect that the character is taking one position while the author may actually believe something quite different.
August 6, 2025
The Tiger Among Us by Leigh Brackett (1957, 192 pgs)...in addition to writing crime fiction author Brackett wrote a lot of sci-fi (the film Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was dedicated to her). Check out her interesting bio....Tiger is a pretty good tale of suspense and vengeance. Walt works late one night and takes a short walk to clear his head. Suddenly a car full of punks stop and brutally kick his butt. Nine days later he wakes up in the hospital with a badly broken leg, a marriage not as strong as he thought and the cops doing nothing about his case. So Walt, now with a cane, begins his own investigation...This was an action packed quick read, a near page turner and you're kept in suspense till the end. The characters and the small-town setting felt real...The only two negatives imho were the moralizing of evil seeds at the end (every town & family has them) and I felt the title was a poor choice...a strong 3.5 outta 5.0...I'll bump it up to a 4.0....
February 28, 2018
This book is not so much a "Whodoneit," as a "Whywuzit?" A man is walking home and 5 teenage boys attack him and beat him within an inch of his life. He's left in a coma for 9 days, and when he wakes up, he finds his life is radically changed.
The book looks mostly on why the boys beat him up. They did not know him. They were sober. Why did they almost kill him? And that is the process of the book. The why, as much as the who. Very well told tale by a first rate author. The best thing I enjoyed is the story did not produce any final hour miracle solutions to juvenile delinquency. It focuses instead on why are some kids good, and some bad. What is the reason for good, and evil?
This book was written in 1957- I think- so it is a little dated by the lack of cell phones and other modern technology, but it overcomes that problem very well.
The book looks mostly on why the boys beat him up. They did not know him. They were sober. Why did they almost kill him? And that is the process of the book. The why, as much as the who. Very well told tale by a first rate author. The best thing I enjoyed is the story did not produce any final hour miracle solutions to juvenile delinquency. It focuses instead on why are some kids good, and some bad. What is the reason for good, and evil?
This book was written in 1957- I think- so it is a little dated by the lack of cell phones and other modern technology, but it overcomes that problem very well.
September 13, 2016
I haven't read many pulp novels, although my boyfriend collects them, but I have a feeling The Tigers Among Us is pretty standard in many ways. The Tiger Among Us tells the story of a man, Walter Sherris, who is attacked by a group of teenage boys, totally at random. By no fault of his own his entire life is changed in that one moment. After weeks in the hospital he is released, only to find that the police have pretty much given up on the case since they have no clues as to who the boys are, and they have more important cases to worry about. Haunted by the unfairness of the attack and a need for revenge, Sherris decides to hunt the boys down on his own.
The one thing that may make this novel different than other pulp fiction is that it delves into the psychology and philosophy behind what makes some men good and some men evil. Sherris ruminates on why he was attacked, and why these boys felt the urge to attack others. However, there were no new ideas brought up so those musing weren't particularly interesting. Perhaps they were more of a product of their time. Overall it was a quick and (sometimes) exciting read, and I think it would appeal to most pulp fiction fans.
The one thing that may make this novel different than other pulp fiction is that it delves into the psychology and philosophy behind what makes some men good and some men evil. Sherris ruminates on why he was attacked, and why these boys felt the urge to attack others. However, there were no new ideas brought up so those musing weren't particularly interesting. Perhaps they were more of a product of their time. Overall it was a quick and (sometimes) exciting read, and I think it would appeal to most pulp fiction fans.
September 30, 2022
He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Five young thugs beat up Walter Sherris and leave him crippled and in a coma for nine days. As he mends, Sherris begins his quest for justice. Or, is it revenge? However, he is not only the hunter, he also becomes the hunted. Good mystery. You'll never lose interest.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews