Jim Thompson, �South of Heaven�
Bet you didn�t know Slayer was doing a tribute to Jim Thompson when they wrote that song, did you? Well, okay, maybe they didn�t � I can�t tell, �cause it all sounds like a bunch of noise to me. You crazy kids with your big pants and your itty-bitty skateboard wheels.
�South of Heaven� in Thompson�s book is supposed to represent Texas, and it�s supposed to be a complement. �Oh, we�re just south of heaven in our little sleepy town.�
It figures that Texans would be so full of themselves as to declare their state �South of Heaven,� while being too dumb to realize that �South� can go an awful long way.
That sums up the characters in this book pretty well, actually: People too full of themselves to realize they�re about as sharp as a wet sponge. I�ve said before that Thompson, for working in genre that�s essentially for hacks, constantly rises above the other mystery/thriller genre because every book is different from the last. Current popular authors� books are usually character-driven, using the same detective or reporter, or garbage collector or whatever, over and over again to the point where you wonder why they even go outside anymore since every time they do, somebody dies.
I can picture the forensic officers. �So, this person showed up in your office, hired you for a case, and then turned up dead a couple of days later?�
�That�s right.�
�Isn�t that what happened last year?�
�Well, not exactly. That woman phoned me first.�
�And the year before that?�
�That was two women. Sisters, actually?�
�And they both turned up dead?�
�Well, yeah.�
�You ever thought about looking into the benefits of being a hermit?�
Anyhoo, that�s the kinda crap that happens in other books. Thompson�s never repeated a formula, even after reading 18 books by him. This book in fact, was starting to read like a harder-edged �Grapes of Wrath,� detailing wandering railroad hobos who went from camp to camp, getting ripped off by everybody. It took nearly 80 pages before some people decided to try and do some ripping off of their own.
Once that started, though, we�re back in funville, Thompson style. His books make me feel like the annoying guy in the back of the theater, yelling out, �Don�t go in there, that guy ain�t right!�
Of course, I was reading it at a coffee shop frequented by panhandlers and others who are looney-tooney, so doing these occasional outbursts made me fit in nicely.
