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Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small Texas town, patient and apparently thoughtful. Some people think he's a little slow and maybe boring, but that's the worst they say about him. But then nobody knows about what Lou calls his 'sickness'. It nearly got him put away when he was younger, but his adopted brother took the rap for that. But now the sickness that has been lying dormant for a while is about to surface again and the consequences are brutal and devastating. Tense and suspenseful, THE KILLER INSIDE ME is a brilliantly sustained masterpiece of the roman noir.… (more)
pnorth: I strongly suspect Easton Ellis is a fan of The Killer Inside Me and drew on it for American Psycho. In any case, the cold fascination you have as a reader for the killers is the same.
gtross: I would be very much surprised if Bret Easton Ellis hadn't been influenced by Jim Thompson's first person narrative of a psychopathic mind.
This was really good. A very quick read. From the way some people talked about it, I expected it to be a lot more graphic than what it was, but I suppose when it was originally released it was that era's AMERICAN PSYCHO, basically. Very good crime noir here, though. You know the writer has skill when you're rooting for the crazy murderer. The ending was a bit rushed, though. Kind of left me disappointed there once it was all over. But maybe I'm just greedy. I did enjoy the way the author tied each plot string together.
This was a dark book. It holds up pretty well but I am not always a fan of some of the noir conventions. Not a feel good book in any way. Don't read this if you need something light and peppy. I will admit I am surprised it took me so long to read it. This is the type of mystery I would have swallowed whole as a kid. ( )
Very well done and hugely disturbing, this was as difficult-to-read as any book I can recall. "Intense" does not do it justice. Strange as this novel was, and shocking as it was, the character of the narrator-protagonist was believable ... frighteningly so. He was a well-respected member of his small town community who people believed was kind, caring and without guile. I will go no further w/o spoilers. ( )
I'd finished my pie and was having a second cup of coffee when I saw him.
Quotations
Striking at people that way is almost as good as the other, the real way. The way I'd fought to forget--and had almost forgot--until I met her.
Did you ever stop to figure that there's all kinds of ways of dying, but only one way of being dead?
The stupid son-of-a-bitch was always doing that. Not just stories about me, but everything. He'd clip out cartoons and weather reports and crappy poems and health columns. Every goddam thing under the sun. He couldn't read a paper without a pair of scissors.
You ask me why I stick around, knowing the score, and it's hard to explain. I guess I kind of got a foot on both fences, Johnnie. I planted 'em there early and now they've taken root, and I can't move either way and I can't jump. All I can do is wait until I split. Right down the middle. That's all I can do...
It was like being asleep when you were awake and awake when you were asleep. I'd pinch myself, figuratively speaking--I had to keep pinching myself. Then I'd wake up kind of in reverse; I'd go back into the nightmare I had to live in. And everything would be clear and reasonable.
Why'd they all have to come to me to get killed? Why couldn't they kill themselves?
The Conways were part of the circle, the town, that ringed me in; the smug ones, the hypocrites, the holier-than-thou guys--all the stinkers I had to face day in and day out. I had to grin and smile and be pleasant to them; and maybe there are people like that everywhere, but when you can't get away from them, when they keep pushing themselves at you, and you can't get away, never, never, get away .
Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small Texas town, patient and apparently thoughtful. Some people think he's a little slow and maybe boring, but that's the worst they say about him. But then nobody knows about what Lou calls his 'sickness'. It nearly got him put away when he was younger, but his adopted brother took the rap for that. But now the sickness that has been lying dormant for a while is about to surface again and the consequences are brutal and devastating. Tense and suspenseful, THE KILLER INSIDE ME is a brilliantly sustained masterpiece of the roman noir.
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