Flight Into Terror

by Lionel White

White's tale of a regular guy who one day happens along a briefcase with 100 grand inside. But then our hero's wife is found dead, the Cuban revolutionary who'd been counting on the dough to score weapons wants her cash back, and things get ugly quick.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Lionel White was a crime reporter who wrote around 38 suspenseful thrillers beginning with The Snatchers in 1953 and ending with The Walled Yard in 1978.

Most of his books were translated into a number of different languages and his earlier novels were published as Gold Medal pulp hard-boiled crime fiction, but when Duttons began a line of mystery and suspense books, he also wrote for them.

He was most well known for what a New York Times review described as "the master of the big caper."

A number of his books were made into movies and Stanley Kubrick liked his book 'Clean Break' (1955) so much that he licensed the rights for his film "The Killing" in 1956.

In Quentin Tarantino's film "Reservoir Dogs", Lionel White is listed as an inspiration for the film in the credits.

Gerry Wolstenholme
May 2011

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the first 30 pages of Flight into Terror well enough; I liked the last couple of pages, too. Unfortunately, I came close to hating the hundred or so pages in between. This bulk of the novel fell prey to one of my major noir peeves: I cannot stand plots that are driven by the completely irrational behavior of their protagonists. In this case, Dal Brandon is an ordinary guy who accidentally ends up with $100,000 that does not belong to him, and the people who want their money back kill Dal's wife. For no sane reason, Dal then decides to take the money and run. He does not care about the money, he says; rather, he is intent on finding his wife's killers and avenging her death. Lionel White might have made this believable if he had portrayed Dal as a devoted, loving husband, but the opposite is true. Not only does Dal not love his (late) wife, but at the start of the novel he is planning to abandon her, having already purchased a one-way plane ticket to Chicago. White's decision to portray Brandon in this way baffles me, and it wrecks the plot of this book.