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Scott Smith
Scott Smith writes powerful, unsettling horror. He is known for his novel The Ruins and his contributions to Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3.
A Simple Plan
Synopsis
When Hank Mitchell, his brother Jacob, and Jacob's friend Lou stumble on a small plane wrecked in the woods near their small Ohio town, they find the pilot dead and a gym bag holding $4.4 million in cash. Rather than report it, the three agree to split the money and wait out the winter to see if anyone comes looking for it. The plan seems simple enough, but each step they take to protect their secret — hiding a body, silencing a witness, managing Lou's growing suspicion and Hank's wife Sarah's cold calculations — pulls them further into deceit and violence. Scott Smith's 1993 thriller is a slow unraveling of ordinary people undone by greed and fear, tracing how one bad decision compounds into an irreversible chain of crimes.
Genres
Characters
Hank MitchellProtagonist
Narrator; a level-headed feed-store manager who talks himself into keeping the money and then into far worse.
Jacob MitchellSupporting
Hank's older brother, an unemployed, overweight loner who first finds the crashed plane.
Lou ChambersSupporting
Jacob's friend, a hard-drinking third partner in the money who becomes a source of growing danger.
Sarah MitchellSupporting
Hank's pregnant wife, whose calm, calculating advice pushes the men toward increasingly drastic acts.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the same story as the 1998 movie?
The novel was adapted into the 1998 film directed by Sam Raimi, starring Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton. The book and film share the same core premise and characters, but the novel's ending is darker and more bleak than the film's, which was softened for the adaptation.
