The Killer Inside Me

Seven years before Robert Bloch introduced Norman Bates and his "mother fixation," twenty-eight years before Dr. Hannibal Lecter was drinking his Chianti with the help of Thomas Harris, thirty-nine years before Bret Easton Ellis introduced Patrick Bateman's psychopathy to America, and fifty-four years before Jeff Lindley was dreaming darkly of Dexter Morgan, Jim Thompson brought the readers Lou Ford, Texas' nicest sociopath, in the book The Killer Inside Me.

This novel would today be considered a "psychological thriller," although at the time this novel was lumped into "crime genre", with the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. I strongly feel this is why these other two authors are household names and Mr. Thompson has languished in obscurity all these years.

The Killer Inside Me is a psychological horror novel. Lou Ford is a killer, he kills without remorse. But this novel is an odd combination of horror and innocence that is seldom found in today's literature. Lou's murders are horrific but are not bloody. Written in first person narration, the reader gets an up close and personal look into the mind of a serial killer. And the disturbing thing is Lou's justifications for the murders make a sick sort of sense. The fact that I was able to say, "Oh, that makes sense" even for a moment during the novel is what I found most disturbing. That Mr. Thompson was able to achieve this without all the graphic blood and guts scenes we as readers have become used to reading was a revelation.

I could not put this novel down once I started it. It is a psychology student's wet dream. Psychopathy (or sociopathy, depending on the age of your psych text book), sexual sadism, childhood trauma and repressed memories, they are all there. The interesting thing was there was no psychological terms in the novel at all. If the deviations were mentioned at all, it was coded in socially acceptable terms. Lou did kill two people in a psychopathic break, but was suffering from "the sickness." I loved it.

Jim Thompson never achieved real success with his books during his lifetime. I hope this review goes a little way to rectifying that error.

5 of 5 stars