Reading Log for 2011

1. After Dark, My Sweet by Jim Thompson (1955) 5/5

 Having read The Killer Inside Me some years ago and having done more researching into the life of Thompson than reading any more of his actual material I decided to finally dig back in and now the man is 2 for 2. I've got a sneaking suspicion that nobody in his novels is even remotely close to a decent human being; sociopaths, psychopaths, alcoholics, drug addicts, opportunistic scum, a few of those are found in this taut and phenomenal work involving a mentally unbalanced ex-fighter, an alcoholic widow with a mean streak that would make a badger wince in fear and a crooked (ex?) cop out for one big score. Nobody trusts anyone, everyone is trying to fuck someone else over. What marks this as something more than just another pulp novel is the ending; poetry has never been so prominent in pulp.