Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s

Robert Polito, editor. Evolving out of the terse and violent style of the pulp magazines, noir fiction expanded over the decades into a varied, innovative and profoundly influential body of writing. The eleven novels in this adventurous two-volume collection tap deep roots in ... read more

After Dark My Sweet by Jim Thompson
"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... His work... casts a dazzling light on the human condition." --Washington Post

In After Dark ... read more

Savage Night by Jim Thompson
"Jim Thompson was pure American writing at its best....He had more pistolero savvy than all the so-called great American writers." -- Harlan Ellison.

In Savage Night, Jim Thompson negotiates hairpin plot reversals and nightmarish shifts of identity with the ... read more

The Getaway by Jim Thompson
The basis for the film by Sam Peckinpah, The Getaway, is a Dantesque tour of the American underworld, a place where no motive is pure, no stranger is innocent, and no tie is too sacred to be betrayed in a nightmarish split second.

"Read Jim Thompso ... read more

The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Lou Ford is the deputy sheriff of a small town in Texas. The worst thing most people can say against him is that he's a little slow and a little boring. But, then, most people don't know about the sickness-- the sickness that almost got Lou put away when he was you ... read more