The Noir Inside Me

A friend gifted me a set of Jim Thompson paperbacks the other day. I've read Thompson before and love the movies The Grifters and The Getaway (Peckinpah and McQueen please, let's not even talk about the other one). I know how dark Thompson is, and to be honest I do like the dark. In my bookclub, I have the reputation of bringing the darkest and bleakest books to the year's reading list (introduced them to The Road, American Pastoral, and DeLillo's, Endzone to name a few).

But here is what I ha...