'Thompson is both a brilliant and an entirely uncompromising writer, and here, in the place of sentiment and salvation is the real and unflinching, bitter unraveling of the American dream.' Glasgow Herald 'If Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich could have joined together in some ungodly union and produced a literary offspring, Jim Thomspon would be it.' Washington Post 'Jim Thompson has more pistolero savvy than all the so-called great American Writers...Thompson was a hammer to their feather-dusters' Harlan Ellison

Jim Thompson (1906-1977) was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma. Among his many novels are The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, The Getaway and After Dark, My Sweet. He also wrote two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory). Pop. 1280 was an acclaimed French film under the title Coup de Torchon.