‘A blisteringly imaginative crime novelist…violent, amoral, terse and fast-moving…a classic American novelist’ Kirkus Reviews
Bill Collins is young, good looking, agile and strong, but he’s a drifter with mild multiple neuroses, in and out of institutions, and dangerously violent on occasion.
When he gets involved with the hard-drinking Fay Anderson and the deceptively pleasant ex-police officer everyone knows as Uncle Bud in a ruthless kidnap plot, everything goes to hell in a hurry, and the end, for Bill, is inevitable and shattering. This is a tour de force of paranoia and violence from the master of the crime noir novel.
Bill Collins is young, good looking, agile and strong, but he’s a drifter with mild multiple neuroses, in and out of institutions, and dangerously violent on occasion.
When he gets involved with the hard-drinking Fay Anderson and the deceptively pleasant ex-police officer everyone knows as Uncle Bud in a ruthless kidnap plot, everything goes to hell in a hurry, and the end, for Bill, is inevitable and shattering. This is a tour de force of paranoia and violence from the master of the crime noir novel.
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Reviews
The most hard-boiled of all the American writers of crime fiction
Jim Thompson is the best suspense writer going, bar none
If Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Cornell Woolrich could have joined together in some ungodly union and produced a literary offspring, Jim Thompson would be it
My favourite crime novelist - often imitated but never duplicated
I don't read many books twice but Jim Thompson novels - due to their concise, dirty power, their relentless violence and purity - can always draw me in for a second time. Some of the most psychological crime writing ever done. I love James M Cain and Elmore Leonard but Jim Thompson holds a special place in my heart.