The Killer Inside Me

⚖The case for it

Small-town Texas deputy Lou Ford is, behind his folksy manner, a sociopathic killer. Thompson narrates from inside the killer's consciousness with complete fidelity: no moral distancing, no authorial judgment. The reader is trapped in the murderer's head. Stanley Kubrick called Thompson the greatest novelist in America.

— the canon

✕The case against

The scene where Lou beats Amy Stanton to death, and the one where he leaves Joyce Lakeland for dead, are written with a lingering care the book reserves for nothing else; filmed faithfully in 2010, they drove audiences out of theaters, and the page is no gentler. Thompson wrote fast for the paperback racks, and outside Lou's skull the characters are cardboard. The psychology is dime-store Freud, a childhood trauma issued like a license. The voice is the whole show. It is some show.

— the honest librarian