“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

I have a shelf full of Jim Thompson books. For A (Black) Gat in the Hand, I decided to read a couple I had not got to yet. So, Wild Town was followed by A Swell Looking Babe. Then, Nothing More than Murder. And I mixed in The Grifters (which I have read, as well as seen the movie) into my audiobook listening.

While I’ve got a post dedicated to maybe his most unusual book – The Transgressors – in the works, I wanted to bring up one common aspect in his writing.

It can be difficult to sympathize with the main character, as they’re often not very nice people. That’s a post in itself. And those characters are often saturated with bleakness. I rarely read two Thompsons in a row. I need a palette cleanse after one. He’s good. But he’s about as joyful as Full Metal Jacket.

Bleak is pretty accurate term for almost any Thompson novel, there are different vibes of depression, and varying flaws in the supposed protagonists.

Two words are driving forces in a Thompson novel:

Despair – The complete loss or absence of hope

Desperation – a state of hopelessness, leading to rashness

The common element again and again, is despair. The main characters are typically in unfulfilling lives. They’re in situations the reader doesn’t envy. They’re existing – often barely. Life hasn’t been easy for them – though they often have contributed to that state of affairs.

Some hardboiled novels use violence to ratchet things up. As Raymond Chandler said, “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.”

Thompson, a master of Noir, frequently uses despair to drive the plot. The protagonist just continues to be weighted down by circumstances: work, family, finances – often a combination – pushing them deeper and deeper into despair. Despair is a state of existence for them. It pulls their weaknesses to the forefront, which makes their situation even worse.

And that despair leads to desperation – which presages action. They see an opportunity to get to a better life. Or they find themselves manipulated by stronger forces. Or they let their impulses take control. And these are not people who make good decisions.

They might be acting for themselves, or impelled by someone who has the advantage over them. Usually they think they see a way to improve their lot – usually justifying the morality of what they’re going to do.

The act of desperation pushes the story forward. Things may look good for our dubious hero for a bit; but pressure is brought to bear – possibly by more than one element – and it’s like the main character is running on a tightrope, trying to keep from taking a fall. We know the fall is coming. We’re turning the pages to see how long they can keep their balance

There’s often ‘an innocent,’ or relatively good person, in the mix. They may be attainable, but the main character’s actions push them out of reach. The despair is coupled with self-responsibility for the worsening situation. Though the flawed main character finds blame in the person who is actually putting up with their poor behavior.

Noir is often hardboiled; but hardboiled is frequently not Noir. Jim Thompson is quite possibly the finest Noir writer of them all. Cornell Woolrich, Paul Cain, Charles Willeford, Chester Himes: James Ellroy, more contemporary: the genre has seen some excellent writers. But Thompson was the Dashiell Hammett of Noir.

You don’t expect ‘the hero’ to have a happy ending when reading Thompson. And the more of him you read, the more that holds true. A little about these three books:

Wild Town saw the return of Thompson’s most well-known character. In 1952, The Killer Inside Me really jump started his writing career. He had written four books in ten years. After Killer, he wrote eleven books in the next two years. Lou Ford, an amiable, aw-shucks, kinda dumb, small-town deputy sheriff, is actually intelligent and frequently on the edge of extreme violence.

While Wild Town came out five years after The Killer Inside Me, it seems to have taken place first. It’s not spelled out, though, and it’s not a prequel (nor a sequel). Ford is definitely recognizable, but there are some differences come the end of the book.

Wild Town is typical Thompson. And that is a compliment. Bugs McKenna is a self-destructive ex-con who drifts West until he lands a hotel detective job – thanks to Ford, who he’d never met before. Ragtown is a post-Oil Boom town run by a cripple named Hanlon. There’s no hope, no opportunity, no joy, in the town. The rich and tyrannical Hanlon, his young femme fatale wife, the angry loser McKenna, deputy sheriff Ford, – who seems to be the only power besides Hanlon – the innocent local girl Amy (from The Killer Inside Me): it’s a potpourri of trouble and despair.

I think it’s a good book, written to appeal to fans of his peak writing period (Thompson’s career was not a smooth one, with some major valleys and periods of being seriously broke).

After I finished Wild Town (this was a first read for me), I started another ‘new one’ – A Swell Looking Babe. This is also centered around a hotel employee; a bell boy. There’s a LOT of autobiography in Thompson’s books. He lived the rough Western town life he captured so well in his books. Be it working in a hotel or roughnecking in the oil fields.

Dusty Rhodes is a smart young man who was on his way to college to be a medical doctor. His family life fell apart and he took a job at the Manton Hotel to make enough money to get back on track to school. But life has a way of trapping people in a Thompson novel. Hotel employees and management, guests, townspeople, family – Thompson gives us a vast array of characters, with full lives that impact their actions. For quality depth, this may be the best of his which I’ve read.

Dusty’s past continues to impact the decisions he makes, and the situations which crop up. Despair and Desperation are woven throughout the book. Thompson’s heroes are excellent at lying to themselves, and blaming others for their problems. He uses those tools very effectively in this one. Thompson’s pushing the plot forward, leaving the reader wanting to see what’s next, is a strong point of this book. I leave it to you to see how he ends it.

I read a couple pretty short stories from his collection, Fireworks: The Lost Writings of Jim Thompson. One, “’The Dark Stair,’ he repurposed (ala Chandler) into Something More Than Murder. That one is an inside look at movie theater life in the 40s. I find that a fascinating topic. The running of the theater in a small town, how distribution worked, et al. Of course, because we’re reading Thompson, there’s depravity, murder, infidelity, business pressure, and the other elements that stir the plot.

Joe Wilmot married Elizabeth Barclay and ended up running her movie theater. She brought in a woman named Carol to live with them. These are three main characters in this novel, and I don’t find any one of them worth rooting for. Bugs McKenna, in Wild Town, was his own worst enemy, his flaws constantly messing up his life. Wilmot is a weak man, but a hard-nosed businessman. He thinks he’s capable of pulling off a crime with the two women. But this is another story where he’s constantly taking desperate actions, with both the law and other not-so-nice citizens pushing him into more danger.

Since I don’t like any of the characters, I’m in this one for the theater business setting. But it’s definitely Thompson Noir.

Back in June, I wrote about the movie version of Thompson’s After Dark My Sweet.

NOTE: I read one more novel before this post went live. The last decade of Thompson’s career was…unproductive, to put it charitably. He did write a novel which Sphere Books (UK) declined to publish. The Rip-Off was serialized after he died, and published in book form in 1985. It’s  a screwball crime mystery that seems lost most of the time. It was entertaining enough to finish, but it only has traces of the writer Thompson was at his peak.

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MORE Cool & Lam!!!!
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Bob Byrne’s ‘A (Black) Gat in the Hand’ made its Black Gate debut in 2018 and has returned every Summer since.

His ‘The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes’ column ran every Monday morning at Black Gate from March, 2014 through March, 2017. And he irregularly posts on Rex Stout’s gargantuan detective in ‘Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone.’ He is a member of the Praed Street Irregulars, and founded www.SolarPons.com (the only website dedicated to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street’).

He organized Black Gate’s award-nominated ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series, as well as the award-winning ‘Hither Came Conan’ series. Which is now part of THE Definitive guide to Conan. He also organized 2023’s ‘Talking Tolkien.’

He has contributed stories to The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories — Parts III, IV, V, VI, XXI, and XXXIII.

He has written introductions for Steeger Books, and appeared in several magazines, including Black Mask, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and Sherlock Magazine.

You can definitely ‘experience the Bobness’ at Jason Waltz’s ’24? in 42′ podcast.