While I slowly, slowly work my way towards another episode of my own podcast, here’s news that I was invited onto someone else’s, the results of which are now available for you to listen to.
My good friend Sergio, who used to run the excellent Tipping My Fedora blog, took some time off and has emerged reborn with a Film Noir podcast of the same name. And, a little while ago, he and I sat down to take a broad sweep through the work of a favourite of mine: the Dimestore Dostoyevsky himself, Jim Thompson.
Sergio’s very patient with me here, being as I’ve seen very little in the way of the films based on Thompson’s work, but we have a good yarn and it’s always lovely to find someone who has respect for Thompson’s artistry — a peculiarly savage artistry though it may be. Books discussed probably include (forgive my faulty memory, we recorded this a little while back):
Nothing More Than Murder (1949)
The Killer Inside Me (1952)
The Alcoholics (1953)
Savage Night (1953)
The Nothing Man (1954)
A Swell-Looking Babe (1954)
A Hell of a Woman (1954)
After Dark, My Sweet (1955)
The Getaway (1958)
The Grifters (1963)
Pop. 1280 (1964)
You can find the episode — and indeed all previous episodes — here. Enjoy!
The Invisible Event 
Thanks so much for being a guest on the podcast, Jim – your enthusiasm and knowledge made for a great conversation (as it does in life, without the microphones 👍). But you will need to watch that Stanwyck movie we discussed, eventually … 🤣
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Always wonderful to discuss Thompson, the man doesn’t get the credit he deserves. Thanks for including me, looking forward to doing this again sometime 🙂
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It’s a great discussion – I think you both really do the books justice. I found the discussion of whether the ending of Pop 1280 works particularly interesting. My memory of my feeling about that ending is that the lack of narrative satisfaction is intentional thematically given how cynical the whole book is. I will have to revisit it to check, though!
As for which book to read first – I started with Pop 1280 based on your suggestion and had a great time with it. The books you come back to at the end of this discussion, though, strike me as an equally good place to start.
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Thanks, Aidan, really appreciate that — sometimes I worry my enthusiasm for Thompson’s work might get in the way of me making a coherent point, but it’s lovely to finally have the chance to dig into his output a little more.
Pop. 1280 is almost a perfect book, and I’d love to recommend it as a first Thompson to see what someone makes of its frank weirdness. Good to know it worked out for someone!
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I am so pleased I listened to Sergio’s and your podcast letting me discover Jim Thompson’s work. After thoroughly enjoying “Pop. 1280”, I just finished “A Hell of a Woman”, which made a strong impression.
Frank “Dolly” Dillon’s spiral into murder and madness plays out with relentless inevitability. The novel’s experimental approach, particularly in its unreliable fever dream of an ending, makes it stand out as a psychological horror story disguised as crime fiction. It’s not just a bleak novel; it’s an experience—one that will stay with me long after the last sentence.
Thanks for turning me on to the novels of Thompson. There is still much to explore.
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Thompson’s a delight — if that’s the word — and it’s lovely to think that people still have the joy of discovering him in their future. He’s by no means an easy read, but if you can get on his wavelength and appreciate what he’s doing, you have some excellent books ahead of you.
I’m really pleased you enjoyed our chat as much and Sergio and I did, and I wish you many happy hours in the screwed up world of Thompson in the years ahead 🙂
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Thanks again to Sergio and you for introducing me to Jim Thompson’s noir fiction. I now have read The Getaway, The Grifters, A Hell of a Woman, Pop. 1280 and just finished Savage Night (what an ending to that one!).
It got me thinking about how Thompson compares to another favourite of mine, Cornell Woolrich. Perhaps I over-simplify, but Woolrich’s focus is on good people driven to ever more extreme actions. Thompson though seems to prefer bad, amoral people driven to ever more extreme actions with bleak outcomes. Woolrich’s prose seems more nightmarish, gothic tinged whilst Thompson writes with a grittier style.
I never thought I would like noir crime fiction, but I look forward to more Thompson and Woolrich in the future. I appreciate that you highlight both on your blog.
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I’m delighted to have introduced you to the joy that is Jim Thompson. He’s not the lightest of stylists or the best of plotters, but his characters and their situations really do live on in my head for a long, long time after I’ve put the books down, which is not something I can always say of more objectively successful writers elsewhere.
And, yes, I agree about the similarities between Woolrich and Thompson, and I’m surprised it took me so long to latch onto myself. Thompson prefers it to go wrong, as if the crushing of hope is the key purpose of his literary worlds, and at times it would be nice to see them swap endings, but it’s no surprise to me that someone who enjoys one would find much to celebrate in the other.
Here’s to lots of happy future reading for you and all who partake in this slighlty grimmer end of the crime fiction spectrum!
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When I think of how desperately I’ve wanted to write “the great American mystery novel” all my life. And what would it get me? Thompson had a father who ran through the family money more than once and inspired some of his son’s greatest psychopaths. He also drank like a fish. Woolrich lost his legs, had no friends and shared a bed with his monstrous mother. And he drank like a fish. Highsmith, a self-described lonely pessimist, smoked forty cigarettes a day and drank from morning till night. Hammett was tubercular and drank. Goodis drank. JD Carr drank. Ellery Queen . . . well, he wrote Ellery Queen novels. Chandler drank. Faulkner drank. Fitzgerald drank. Glug, glug, glug!
Can you wonder why I crossed the pond and latched myself onto Christie? Aside from one emotionally difficult year (which also saw the publication of one of her greatest novels), she lived a happy, conventional life. The only thing she seemed to glug was a class of heavy cream.
Writing a book seems to be a lot like conceiving, carrying and birthing a child all by yourself. You have to determine its weight, its sex, its very potential for a successful life. And when you have lifted your finished “baby” out of the pool of your own blood, sweat and tears and sent it off to live its own life, you have no control over how well it will do. It never writes you back. It’s up to others to let you know, quite publicly, what a rotten child it is.
This dream makes no sense!
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