Strongly resembling a straight suspense thriller, Recoil may fit more closely into the detective/crime genre made popular by Hammett and other of Thompson's contemporaries than any of his other novels. While several of its characters might be termed stereotypical, Thompson departs from crime novel tradition by allowing his protagonist and hero to be an ex-convict. Rather than having the crime solved by a detective, Thompson allows the would-be victim to solve the crime himself, thereby redeeming himself in what for a time seems a graceless world.