You can have your Hannibal Lector. Keep your Dexter Morgan and even your Anton Chigurh. For my money there is no scarier literary killer than Deputy Lou Ford. Next week Jim Thompson’s iconic creation is making the transition from page to screen in Michael Winterbottom’s film The Killer Inside Me.
Lou Ford has got the perfect set up, a pretty fiancé, a good job that affords him access to the whole town and the respect and admiration of no one. Sure, he’s generally well thought of—Lou Ford? He’s a nice fella, little slow, but just a nice fella for sure. And Lou absolutely loves playing on people’s perception of him. He drawls on in corny clichés and aw-shucks his way through most days. More than that, Lou takes perverse pleasure in pushing the limits of people’s good humor dealing with him:
The smile on his face was getting strained. I could hear his shoes creak as he squirmed. If there’s anything worse than a bore, it’s a corny bore. But how can you brush off a nice friendly fellow who’d give you his shirt if you asked for it? … That was dragging ‘em in by the feet, but I couldn’t hold ‘em back. Striking at people that way is almost as good as the other way.
Lou has got about everything he could want until Joyce Lakeland comes to town and sets up shop. Lou’s boss, the sheriff tells Lou to go give her a little professional trouble.
(Is she) “a Hustlin’ lady, Bob?”
“We-el, I reckon so but she’s bein’ mighty decent about it. She ain’t running it into the ground, and she ain’t takin’ on no roustabouts or sheepherders. If some of these preachers around town wasn’t rompin’ on me, I wouldn’t bother her a-tall.”
One look at Joyce is all it takes for Lou. He’ll jeopardize everything to be involved with her, but when she hints at leverage she may have against him, Lou’s interior monologue is succinct and chilling:
I kissed her, a long hard kiss. Because baby didn’t know it, but baby was dead, and in a way I couldn’t have loved her more.
Lou wreaks havoc on the town, leaving a trail of bodies and ruined lives in his wake, but never completely loses our sympathy which is quite a trick. And that’s all in the writing. Jim Thompson is one of the greatest American novelists ever. There, I said it. Unfortunately, his work also suffered at the crossroads of greatness and alcoholism and you could drive a gigantic metaphor through the gaps between his best and worst work, but The Killer Inside Me sits comfortably atop the heap in the former category.
One of Thompson’s favorite riffs was the protagonist everybody thought was dumb and was happy to let them go on believing it, (Pop. 1280, After Dark, My Sweet) and he plays it beautifully here, conjuring some of the most guilty chuckles you’ll ever experience through the first person narration of the subtly, (and not so subtly), sadistic deputy.
Filmed versions of Thompson’s work run as big a quality gamut as his own books do, (highlights include Grifters, After Dark, My Sweet, Coup de Torchon, and Getaway), and Stanley Kubrick commissioned two scripts from him The Killing and Paths of Glory, and while I strongly believe in the talents of the people involved with the new film, (Casey Affleck continues to surprise me with the gravity of his roles, Gone Baby Gone and Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, from great books by Dennis Lehane and Ron Hansen respectively), I stand on firmly on the solid rock of Thompson’s masterpiece book.
For more on Jim Thompson, I highly recommend Robert Polito's Savage Art. For a briefer glimpse here's a great recent piece on Jim Thompson by Declan Burke.
What are your favorite, (or least favorite), Jim Thompson works?
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
