The Killer Inside Me

Hello and welcome as we take a journey into Another Year of Fiction. I decided to kick off this year’s experiment with a novel that was recommended to me by several people last year: Jim Thompson’s incredible 1952 crime novel The Killer Inside Me. Having received accolades from such luminaries as Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King, Thompson’s most famous book is a terrifying dive into the psyche of a normalized serial killer. The notion that depravity lies just below the surface of a small-town demeanor is one crucial theme of this novel, but there are some very important writing lessons to take away from it as well.

1. The unreliable narrator. Thompson takes this about as far as it can possibly, or humanely, go. Lou Ford is about the most untrustworthy narrator one could create for a crime novel, as it’s written from his perspective. We see him commit the first crimes, and for a long while he (and the reader) thinks he’s going to get away with it. It’s only later that we can see the mental breakdown of the deputy sheriff and how events and evidence conspire against him, leading to his understanding that there will be no escape. This would have looked a lot different from a more omniscient perspective, and that is why the first-person narration works so well for this book. Not only that, but Thompson does a monumental job building this character and showing how well he blends in with the other residents of Central City - a truly horrific portrait.
2. Not having to reveal everything. There were a few contributors to Lou Ford’s “sickness” during his life, but as readers we are only privy to a handful of scenes that illustrate what he’s been through. There are mentions of his father, brother, and the family housekeeper, but Thompson deftly keeps these things to a minimum so the reader has to fill in the holes of what happened that turned the main character into such a monster. While initially this disappointed me, I came to understand why Thompson made that decision (along with a major reveal at the very end): it’s much scarier to imagine what all happened to this guy to turn him into a killer.

This was in my estimation a phenomenal book, and one of the creepiest I’ve read in some time. While I would recommend it, I’d direct that more toward people inclined to read crime/mystery or horror novels. But if you can stomach the dark vision of humanity and what lurks underneath, it would be hard to do better than this novel.

Next up: I decided a good antidote to the bizarre, misogynistic churn of our culture would be that most classic of feminist novels, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. (But mostly it’s because my wife has been asking me to read this one for years.)

Stay tuned for the next essay in Another Year of Fiction. And thanks for reading.