The Killer Inside Me

The Killer Inside Me is a crime novel by the American writer Jim Thompson, published in 1952. It is narrated by its killer, and it has been described as one of the most uncompromising books in American noir.

Lou Ford is the deputy sheriff of a small town in Texas. He has a steady girlfriend, a schoolteacher called Amy Stanton, and a way of needling people with platitudes and clichés until they cannot stand it, which is the only outlet most people ever see for what is wrong with him. Amy wants to marry him, and the town treats him as harmless, which is exactly how he needs things to be.

Ford begins an affair with a prostitute named Joyce Lakeland, and it unlocks the sickness that has troubled him since adolescence. The novel follows what he does with that freedom, and how a man who is trusted by everyone around him keeps himself outside suspicion. Thompson writes the book in Ford's own voice, which leaves the reader inside his justifications as well as his crimes.