Well, indeed, I am months behind on these book report posts. Back to the crime fiction... The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson's 1952 "underground classic" (as they say) is about as noir as noir gets. The story of Lou Ford, a sociopathic deputy sheriff in a small Texas town, and told first person from the killer's point of view, this is a very, very dark piece of work. But not unbearably so, for it's very cleverly written, with some plot points sneaking through that Lou misses, and you can't quite put together, but you know something is up that he's missing. There's also a heapin' helping of black humor... some very writerly humor as well, with Lou complaining about how some other crime books are written. A bravura performance of nastiness.
You think that was strange? Check out Thompson's Pop. 1280. It is equally as insane. Joyce Carol Oates' Zombie which is Thompson turned up to 11.
Posted by J. James Bono at 02:02 AM, November 29, 2003.Nothing gets stranger than John Franklin Bardin's The Deadly Percheron, a fifties noir riff on madness and identity changes. It reads like a David Lynch movie.
Posted by H. at 06:45 AM, January 26, 2004.