Rating: 
Summary: Pleasant little story
Review: This book trips along nicely in some parts. Loses it a little toward the end. A quiet Sunday afternoon book.
Rating:
Summary: This is supposed to be good writing?
Review: I really wanted to like Jim Thompsons stuff. I like noir, and am interested in Thompsons life (from the culturally dead Midwest, his collaborations with Stanley Kubrick, his communist sympathies, his alcoholic breakdown). I found a copy of Recoil after I saw several impressive reviews of his stuff. Recoil was an easy read, but average. Nothing great stylistically or in substance. I then read more about the author, and found that Killer Inside Me was his best, most ground breaking work. But this book was bland. While trying to swrite from the first person view of a criminally sick mind, we get none of the depth into sickness and depravity that writers like Dosteovsky, Poe, or more recently Larry Browne can give. The dialogue is totally unbelievable and often absurd, especially the inner dialogue of the killer. The ending seems amazingly hurried and botched. This book may feed some men's macho fantasies, but as work of art its fairly mediocre.
Rating: 
Summary: The Killer Inside Jim Thompson
Review: While some of the impact of this tale has tempered in time (it was originally published in 1952), the stark brutality of the narrator draws you in slowly ... and the novel's first 150 pages are relatively slow-paced ... until the reader comes to the full realization that Officer Lou Ford isn't committing the acts of violence that he does out of any other need than to feed the killer inside him.The last forty to fifty pages of this book are captivatingly brilliant prose -- arguably the best by Mr. Thompson -- and should be carefully read (if not reread) by serious fans of mystery or noir as well as budding mystery, thriller, and suspense writers. They serve not only as a character study into the mind of a madman who finally understand what he is but also give a definitive explanation into why the narrator will never accept what he's done (the people he's killed, those he's punished, etc.) as being morally wrong. All in all, it's one damn fascinating character study that takes a while to get going ... but, once it does, it's one wild ride.
Rating:
Summary: Noir Classic Will Slay You
Review: I imagine that Jim Thompson's "The Killer Inside Me" was quite a shocker upon first publication in 1952, when the idea of the psychopathic serial killer was still quite unusual. Thompson's protagonist, small town deputy sheriff Lou Ford, tells his tale of murder and mayhem in the first person, which adds to the book's sense of dread. 1950s-era notions of morality and chivalry are also key to the development of the plot. A prosecutor can, for example, accuse a man of murder while questioning him, but it isn't good form to degrade his mother by calling him an S.O.B. while doing so. The only caveat to recommending this book is that its shock value is somewhat diminished by the many real life horrors our modern society has witnessed since it first hit the shelves. A quick page turner and relatively brief at 244 pages, this is one tough "Killer."
Rating:
Summary: Sorry pedro!
Review: Thompson's gritty little yarn gives a very entertaining and viceral spin on that whole Texas justice schtick.A fine pulp novel.
Rating: 
Summary: an 'American Psycho' in west Texas, circa 1950...
Review: 'The Killer Inside Me' is my first taste of Jim Thompson, and it certainly delivers what the title says. The writing style is something like Horace McCoy and James M. Cain, but the language and setting is rural west Texas (..it sounds much like the Midland/Odessa area). In short the book is full of punchy dialogue, some of which is surprisingly crude/vulgar (for a book written in the early 1950s), and the story is compact yet forceful. 'The Killer Inside Me' is the story of deputy sheriff in a small (fictitious) Texan oil town. He narrates his thoughts and actions in controlling, and mostly not controlling, his inner rage which leads to murder. He is cold, calculating, and very intelligent. His behaviour is horrific, but fortunately Jim Thompson spares us from the technicolor graphics (as opposed to the more recent 'American Psycho' novel, based on a broadly similar story). So 'The Killer Inside Me', while a shocking and depressing read, is not like reading the screenplay of a slasher flick. Bottom line: a simple story brilliantly told. We get to enter the mind of a homocidal maniac, witness his dirty deeds, and are left speechless. Strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Meet Lou Ford...
Review: Ok. If you haven't read this book order it right now and read it. Better yet, get out of your house/office.wherever you are and get it RIGHT NOW and READ! This is funny, sick, shocking, gripping... Forget American Psycho. This is the stuff. And you'll even find yourself kinda liking ol' Lou. Don't ever see the movie, by the way. An atrocity. By no means thompson's best, but a great novel nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: Journey into the mind of a killer
Review: 'The Killer Inside Me' is my first--and favorite--Thompson I ever read, and now I've read them all. I highly recomend this book if you're a fan of the "crime nior" genre. Clearly Jim Thompson had some problems. Fortunately for us, he was so eloquent in telling us about them.
Rating:
Summary: Explosive
Review: I'm not sure what else I can add to what has been written about this Thompson novel . It is so good you feel almost compelled to say yes, I too have read this run-away explosive novel. Lou Ford is a sheriff who plays the dunce yet is actually a very educated and intelligent man who also just happens to be a psychopath waiting to go off like a roman candle. After events light his fuse this novel starts to run screaming down the street and begins to laugh so hard it can't stop and no that is not the reader laughing. This story is written in the classic noir pulp style, but it transcends the genre and is hard to neatly label. Don't stop with this one, Thompson has written many great reads.
Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding!
Review: A truly wonderful read. At first you have the impression that this is a folksy book about a Sherrif's life in a small, sleepy town. This is a first class deception and, as events unfold, one feels genuine fear. Although events are incredible in some ways they are totally plausible in others. I make this point having read (and very much enjoyed) others such as Thomas Harris, James Elroy, Ruth Rendell and James Patterson. They don't come close in terms of atmosphere. Many authors like to instigate fear through gory, explicit prose. This man has a skill that goes way beyond simple description of events in graphic terms. He creates fear through the simplicity of the events he describes, combined with the totally casual way in which the deeds themselves are enacted. Before I read this book, I had never read anything by this man; subsequently, I have read The Getaway, Grifters and Pop. 1280. They are all brilliant though in very different ways and it is impossible to compare one against the other. So, do yourself a big favour, read them all....and soon!!
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