Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson

Tags:  crime-fiction, favorite-fiction,

I just re-read this this week. What a book! I think this might be Thompson’s best. I forgot how funny it is in places, especially the first few chapters and the chapter near the end with Rose’s tirade about Lennie, which has to be one of the raunchiest things ever printed. How did Thompson get away with that in 1964?

This book also happens to be one of the most scathing indictments of Southern small-town life ever written. It’s a little over the top in places, which comes off as bawdy, farcical and harrowing all at the same time.

The story is quite similar to The Killer Inside Me, with it’s first-person narration by a deranged homocidal small-town sherrif. This book is shorter than The Killer Inside Me, and funnier and darker, due to its criticism of the racism, injustice, hypocrisy and meanness of the society in which it takes place.