The Big Clock (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Kenneth Fearing
- First Published: 1946
- Type of Plot: Suspense
- Time of Work: The 1940’s
- Setting: New York City
- Principal Characters: George Stroud, Earl Janoth, Steve Hagen, Louise Patterson, Pauline Delos
- Genres: Long fiction, Suspense
- Subjects: Murder or homicide, Psychology or psychologists, Human behavior, Conspiracies or conspirators, Morality or morals
- Locales: New York, NY
The Novel
The Big Clock is a psychological suspense novel that achieves its effect primarily through irony. The major character, George Stroud, is assigned the task of finding a missing person, a phantom witness both he and the reader know is actually George Stroud himself. As the novel builds, his position becomes ever more precarious, and the suspense is enhanced by the seeming inevitability of his being found out. He is racing, literally, against the clock, because time is playing with his life, and the suspense of the net closing around him keeps the narrative...
[The entire page is 2175 words long]
