Litchfield Reviews Hostage for a Hood and The Merriweather File for the Lancashire Post: In two top-notch crime capers from the 1950s, a car accident steers an innocent woman into the thick of a violent armoured car robbery, and dark marital revelations surface after a dead body is found in the trunk of a salesman’s car. Influential American crime writer Lionel White is often described as the master of the big caper. His 1955 novel Clean Break was adapted by Stanley Kubrick as the basis for the film noir classic The Killing and a number of White’s other 35 novels have been made into films.