The Killer Inside Me

⚖The case for it

You spend the book locked inside Lou Ford’s flat, ordinary-sounding thoughts, which readers call “one of the best uses of first-person narration I’ve ever seen” and far worse to sit with than anything that happens outside his head. The folksy small-town deputy act is a mask you get to watch working on people who cannot see through it, and every conversation with the sheriff or the doctor runs on what you know and they do not. Thompson writes “pure pulp poetry, sparse, gritty, and dripping with atmosphere.” One critic names the real trick: “the killer inside Lou and Lou as a killer inside you, reader.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The violence toward women is detailed and dwelt on while violence toward men passes fast, and readers point at lines like “a good beating is the only foreplay a woman should ever need” as what they cannot get past. The women themselves are stock, since “all his women, be they whores or schoolmarms, are shrewish harpies.” The middle drags through repetitive small-town scenes after a fast opening, and the back half runs on hunches and coincidence. Some find the menace oversold as well, one noting that “Dolores Umbridge is creepier than Lou.”

— the honest librarian

5h

honest hours

7

sittings