Lou Ford is a consummate serial killer created by a writer who knew his way around the dark nooks and crannies of the troubled, impassioned, and diseased minds of wayward men and women better than most, and who masterfully portrayed these traits in simple, stark, and powerful language. THE KILLER INSIDE ME, perhaps his best, serves as the blueprint for the nearly perfect serial killer novel because it plunks you down inside the mind of the killer; you see the world through his off kilter eyes. If you're looking for crime fiction that stands heads and shoulders above the usual genre fare stuffed with overly dramatized and generally implausible protagonists, THE KILLER INSIDE ME, along with a handful of other novels, may be what you want.
THE KILLER INSIDE ME offers you Lou Ford, the aw-shucks deputy who appears a little slow on the uptake, who handily dispenses clichés upon every occasion, who, in short, strikes you as a pretty nice, ineffective guy in the beginning and then, amazingly, given his predilection for murder, a sympathetic, tormented man. It's a credit to Thompson's skill that you feel for Ford in the end.
Don't assume that just because THE KILLER INSIDE ME appeared in 1952 that the prose is censored milquetoast. Thompson's writing is blunt and raw, as in the scene in which Lou cold-bloodedly kills Joyce, the prostitute he's been frequenting and abusing as he executes his plan of revenge against local big-deal Chester Conway: "I backed her against the wall, slugging, and it was like pounding a pumpkin. Hard, then everything giving away at once." Or this, after inflicting a brutal beating upon his fiancé, leaving her barely alive while he awaits the person he plans to frame for her murder: "I sat down and tried to read the paper. I tried to keep my eyes on it. But the light wasn't very good, not good enough to read by, and she kept moving around. It looked like she couldn't lie still." Those are the thoughts of a true sociopath.
Don't fear extraneous excursions into back stories and side narratives; or excessive descriptions of the countryside or characters. Thompson gives exactly enough to provide context and move the story along swiftly. That's no mean ability; it earned him a living as a screen and television writer for Stanley Kubrick and others.
Do expect sharply drawn characters. You'll get to know Lou, Joyce, Elmer, Chester, Johnnie (who put his trust in a psychopath who understood only self preservation), Amy (who campaigned to marry Lou to unfortunate results), and the others not through elaborate descriptions but through what they say and do.
And do expect a realistic serial killer who goes about his business in a straightforward way, a killer who is at heart a sociopath, a manipulator of people, who Thompson based on emerging research on psychopathology, research that forms the foundation of modern thinking about these people.
Highly recommended not only as the best crime fiction but also a fine literary experience.
Along the lines of Thompson, other writers have put readers into the minds of serial killers with interesting, satisfying, and enlightening results. Some recommendations are: Joyce Carol Oates's ZOMBIE, in which Quentin travels around Michigan in search of victims to lobotomize into sexual service; THE COLLECTOR, featuring the self-centered Fred Clegg who wins a pool and uses the money to collect beautiful young women, Miranda the first, whom he expects to love him; and my own I, KILLER, in which morbid men congregate around the bed of a psychopathic killer and lead him to his judgment at the hands of a girl named Sarah.
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