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4.0 out of 5 stars
Very enjoyable Thompson!, Jun 5 2002
"The Criminal" is an unusual Jim Thompson novel. He charts the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Midwest girl. The prime suspect is Bob, a 15-year-old neighbor, who has a history with the girl. Bob's a bit of a juvenile delinquent, but comes across as a decent person. His parents are convinced that Bob didn't have anything to do with the murder, or are they? A number of different people become involved in and influence the case, each with her/his own agenda, including the DA, Bob's parents, and the local media. Chapters are told from the viewpoint of these different characters, and this technique is used quite successfully here. The joy of this book comes not from the suspense of figuring out who committed the crime, but in seeing how the case is effected by each character. Overall, a highly enjoyable and fascinating Thompson novel.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Thompson at his best, Jun 21 2001
What a refreshing book, particularly the use of different narrators & the (successful) heavy reliance on dialog to propel the story. I was very concerned Thompson's books would all be alike after I read & loved "The Killer Inside Me" ... & they're not at all ... this is a completely different style from that or from, say, "South of Heaven" or "Now And On Earth." I've read one other book that used this approach, John Burnham Schwartz's much more recent & also excellent "Reservation Road" & it works very well for both writers. Thompson is wonderfully controlled with it, keeping things short & tight. I love how many people assume young Bob Talbert is innocent & railroaded ... in fact, Thompson leaves the question of his innocence or guilt entirely with the reader & it's beautifully ambiguous, especially if the reader is familiar with the sociopathic personality which, without ever saying it, Thompson gives Talbert plenty of room to be. Thompson was ahead of his time understanding criminals & perhaps much of it was intuitive, from what he knew about himself. Whatever his personal weaknesses he was very brave in showing people's inherent capacity for evil, without apologizing for it. It's in Thompson's ability to see the universal capacity for evil that his humanity lies.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
First person chapters, Jun 4 2001
This is almost an experimental novel by Thompson. It consists of short first person chapters giving you different windows, (views from different characters), on and around the same event. This event is the murder of a young girl. Finishing the book you are left unsure as to who the real criminal is and even wondering if there was any innocent person in the book. The attorney Kossmeyer, a character we see a few years later in Thompson's book "Kill-off", is probably the most moral of any of them, but there are no perfect people here. Thompson is really writing outside the box with this one and when an author does this it usually doesn't succeed. Thompson pulls this off for the most part however. You can't look for the story to be all summed up in the end. What he gives the reader is splendid windows into the minds and motivations of different characters. The priorities of the characters are laid bare, their motivations exposed and we along with some of them learn a little about what is important in life. Placed before the first chapter is a quote from "Romeo and Juliet"--- "There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murders in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none." After reading this novel you will see just how well this quote fits it.
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