Jim Thompson

Jim Thompson (1906–1977) was an American crime novelist and screenwriter known for bleak, psychologically intense hardboiled and noir fiction. Born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, he drew on Depression-era hardship and small-town corruption to craft stories of violence, moral rot, and unreliable narrators. His best-known novels include *The Killer Inside Me* (1952) and *Pop. 1280* (1964), both centered on outwardly ordinary lawmen with sinister inner lives. Thompson also worked in Hollywood, co-writing Stanley Kubrick’s heist film *The Killing* (1956). Though underappreciated for years, he later gained wide recognition as a major voice in American noir.