Overview:
Before Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, there was Jim Thompson’s charismatic killer Lou Ford. The main character of The Killer Inside Me, Ford is an early, vivid, and at times extremely human portrait of a sociopath. Lou does not just pass for normal in the novel: he is normal—except when he is killing, or having violent sex, or injecting himself with drugs left over from his father’s medical practice. As a result of this juxtaposition of a friendly next-door neighbor with a casually savage killer, The Killer Inside Me is hypnotic. The way Lou’s life, his small Texas town, and his surface persona disintegrate throughout the novel leads to an inevitably calamitous ending, but readers for over half a century have not been able to look away.
The Killer Inside Me won considerable praise in 1952 when it was published, and in the years since, the book has come to be seen as one of the pivotal texts in the American noir tradition. In the novel, Jim Thompson turns a critical eye on small-town America and exposes it as corrupt and perverted, a verdict that would be shocking even now, but which in the 1950s seemed like sacrilege.
Central City, Texas. Lou Ford is a sheriff's deputy who wouldn't hurt a fly. He likes to tell dull philosophical clichés and is appreciated by his boss and the town's population. But Lou is totally psychotic, refraining from an urge to hit and kill women who remind him of his nurse, his father's mistress. He already has killed a little girl but his half-brother Mike went to prison in his place. One day, he's asked by the sheriff to visit Joyce Lakeland, a prostitute, who soon falls in love with Lou and his sexual violence. Together they plan to leave town after having swindled Chester Conway, a rich businessman whose son Elmer has become sexually involved with Joyce. But Lou, exasperated by Joyce's love, kills her and Elmer in cold blood. As nothing can connect him to the murder, Lou observes with cynicism the Sheriff's efforts to find the murderer. Meanwhile, Lou's girlfriend, Lucille, wants him to marry her, Johnnie Papas, Lou's friend, is arrested and suspected of being the murderer and a pipe-line worker who saw Lou near Joyce's house is blackmailing him. Will Lou's mind be able to cope with these unexpected events ?
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Sincerelyours
And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!
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