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Nothing More Than Murder
Joe Wilmot has the nicest movie theatre in his area. Sure it wasn't a major city, but it was something he had built up. The Barclay Theatre still carries his wife's maiden name, but it didn't bother him much—not too much at all. His wife Elizabeth was always fouling things up and Joe was always fixing things. Sure, a few people lost out in their dealing with Joe, but what the hey, this was business. And one thing Joe had learned growing up in the orphanage was that you got to look out for number one. But now Joe has fallen, quite inexplicably, for the new housekeeper, Carol. When Elizabeth finds out about Joe and Carol, she devises a plan to give them all what they want. Unfortunately, for the plan to work, it means someone is going to have to pay with their life. And if the plan unravels, they may all have to pay with their lives!
"Suspense in high gear." - New York Times
"Strong Meat." - Boston Globe
"Reminiscent of James Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, both in style and story." - San Francisco Bulletin
"Suspense in high gear." - New York Times
"Strong Meat." - Boston Globe
"Reminiscent of James Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, both in style and story." - San Francisco Bulletin
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1949
115 people are currently reading
983 people want to read
About the author
Jim Thompson
160 books1,646 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
James Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction.
Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice, notably by Anthony Boucher in the New York Times, he was little-recognized in his lifetime. Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow, when in the late 1980s, several novels were re-published in the Black Lizard series of re-discovered crime fiction.
Thompson's writing culminated in a few of his best-regarded works: The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman and Pop. 1280. In these works, Thompson turned the derided pulp genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and surrealism.
The writer R.V. Cassills has suggested that of all pulp fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor even Horace McCoy, author of the bleak They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, ever "wrote a book within miles of Thompson". Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the forgoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."
Thompson admired Fyodor Dostoevsky and was nicknamed "Dimestore Dostoevsky" by writer Geoffrey O'Brien. Film director Stephen Frears, who directed an adaptation of Thompson's The Grifters as 1990's The Grifters, also identified elements of Greek tragedy in his themes.
James Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels, short stories and screenplays, largely in the hardboiled style of crime fiction.
Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice, notably by Anthony Boucher in the New York Times, he was little-recognized in his lifetime. Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow, when in the late 1980s, several novels were re-published in the Black Lizard series of re-discovered crime fiction.
Thompson's writing culminated in a few of his best-regarded works: The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman and Pop. 1280. In these works, Thompson turned the derided pulp genre into literature and art, featuring unreliable narrators, odd structure, and surrealism.
The writer R.V. Cassills has suggested that of all pulp fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor even Horace McCoy, author of the bleak They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, ever "wrote a book within miles of Thompson". Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because "The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the forgoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it."
Thompson admired Fyodor Dostoevsky and was nicknamed "Dimestore Dostoevsky" by writer Geoffrey O'Brien. Film director Stephen Frears, who directed an adaptation of Thompson's The Grifters as 1990's The Grifters, also identified elements of Greek tragedy in his themes.
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September 4, 2025
L’OSCURO LATO ANARCHICO
Jim Thompson è il marito di Charlotte Rampling in “Farewell, My Lovely” di Dick Richards (1975), dove Marlowe è interpretato da uno splendido Robert Mitchum.
Ci sono due donne e un uomo: la voce narrante, Joe, proprietario di un cinema di provincia, sua moglie Elizabeth, e Carol, l’amante.
Il triangolo regge in equilibrio finché gli angoli non cominciano ad agitarsi.
E qui succede che la moglie, mai davvero amata, trova il marito tra le braccia della cameriera, e invece di urlare e minacciare, propone all’uomo un piano semplice semplice: lascerà in pace i due amanti, si toglierà di mezzo se viene dichiarata morta e retribuita con la sua assicurazione sulla vita. Prendi i soldi e scappa, per così dire.
È stata la sua unica volta in veste di attore, due anni prima di morire (1977).
Naturalmente l’assicurazione paga – quando paga – se c’è un cadavere. E quindi hanno bisogno di un corpo che possa essere scambiato per quello di Elizabeth. Il marito ha il compito di selezionare la persona giusta attraverso un annuncio nel giornale locale.
Individuata la donna ideale, Carol ha il compito di attrarla a casa loro, dove sarà ritrovata carbonizzata dall’incendio della stessa casa.
Trattandosi di un noir, e di uno particolarmente buono, è chiaro che le cose non vanno come previsto. Infatti, quando arriva il detective mandato dall’assicurazione…
Thompson sviluppa la trama senza trascurare di portarci nella mente e nelle motivazioni dei suoi tre protagonisti adepti di morale alternativa, riesce a raccontare da grande scrittore abissi esistenziali usando la rapidità e gli escamotage del pulp.
Jim Thompson e al centro Robert Redford. Nel 1970 Robert Redford incaricò Thompson di scrivere una sceneggiatura originale su un hobo durante la Grande Depressione: Thompson scrisse “Bo” per diecimila dollari, ma il film non è mai stato realizzato.
Il terzo romanzo di Jim Thompson, il suo prime crime thriller, uscito nel 1949, anche questo come i precedenti passato senza clamore né successo.
È con quello dopo che esplode, se così si può dire: il suo quarto romanzo è anche quello suo più famoso, The Killer Inside Me, quello che lo portò a incontrare e collaborare con Stanley Kubrick.
Il sommo regista definì il romanzo:
la descrizione in prima persona più agghiacciante e credibile di una mente corrotta dal crimine in cui mi sia mai imbattuto.
E coinvolse Thompson nel suo esordio, The Killing – Rapina a mano armata, per il quale Thompson curò i dialoghi e Kubrick la struttura della trama.
L’anno dopo bissarono la collaborazione nel capolavoro Paths of Glory – Orizzonti di gloria, magnifico inno antimilitarista (e non solo).
Avviando così un canale diretto col mondo del cinema che da lì in avanti ha spesso attinto alla sua narrativa: tra originali e remake, film cinema e film tv, si contano altri diciotto titoli, con almeno altre tre gemme, The Getaway, splendidamente diretto da Sam Peckinpah e altrettanto splendidamente interpretato da Steve McQueen, Coup de torchon, magia registica di un Bertrand Tavernier particolarmente in forma, e The Grifters – Rischiose abitudini dove Stephen Frears dirige al suo meglio un trio di interpreti sopraffini, Annette Bening, Anjelica Huston e John Cusack.
I suoi protagonisti, fascinosamente corrotti, oscuri e ambigui, maledettamente divertenti, hanno debiti diretti con la vera vita di Jim Thompson, in particolare con la figura paterna: il padre dello scrittore, Jim Thompson senior, era uno sceriffo un po’ cowboy che a un certo punto diventò petroliere avendo avuto la sorte di scavare e trovare giacimento. Ma non sono sicuro che non abbia continuato a fare la vecchia attività mentre portava avanti la nuova, tra legalità traballante e affarismo, fino alla successiva rovina e fallimento.
Nel suo piccolo (per me grande), Thompson era una risposta all’America dei suoi tempi, serrata nella rigidità della Guerra Fredda, in pieno periodo di maccartismo: a quelle rigide dicotomie, comunismo/democrazia, totalitarismo/libertà, moralità/immoralità, Thompson ha opposto la sua descrizione di un mondo popolato da gente ambigua, corrotta e violenta, spesso dalla mente deformata. Nulla a che vedere con stato, chiesa, famiglia (dio, patria, famiglia?).
Jim Thompson è il marito di Charlotte Rampling in “Farewell, My Lovely” di Dick Richards (1975), dove Marlowe è interpretato da uno splendido Robert Mitchum.
Ci sono due donne e un uomo: la voce narrante, Joe, proprietario di un cinema di provincia, sua moglie Elizabeth, e Carol, l’amante.
Il triangolo regge in equilibrio finché gli angoli non cominciano ad agitarsi.
E qui succede che la moglie, mai davvero amata, trova il marito tra le braccia della cameriera, e invece di urlare e minacciare, propone all’uomo un piano semplice semplice: lascerà in pace i due amanti, si toglierà di mezzo se viene dichiarata morta e retribuita con la sua assicurazione sulla vita. Prendi i soldi e scappa, per così dire.
È stata la sua unica volta in veste di attore, due anni prima di morire (1977).
Naturalmente l’assicurazione paga – quando paga – se c’è un cadavere. E quindi hanno bisogno di un corpo che possa essere scambiato per quello di Elizabeth. Il marito ha il compito di selezionare la persona giusta attraverso un annuncio nel giornale locale.
Individuata la donna ideale, Carol ha il compito di attrarla a casa loro, dove sarà ritrovata carbonizzata dall’incendio della stessa casa.
Trattandosi di un noir, e di uno particolarmente buono, è chiaro che le cose non vanno come previsto. Infatti, quando arriva il detective mandato dall’assicurazione…
Thompson sviluppa la trama senza trascurare di portarci nella mente e nelle motivazioni dei suoi tre protagonisti adepti di morale alternativa, riesce a raccontare da grande scrittore abissi esistenziali usando la rapidità e gli escamotage del pulp.
Jim Thompson e al centro Robert Redford. Nel 1970 Robert Redford incaricò Thompson di scrivere una sceneggiatura originale su un hobo durante la Grande Depressione: Thompson scrisse “Bo” per diecimila dollari, ma il film non è mai stato realizzato.
Il terzo romanzo di Jim Thompson, il suo prime crime thriller, uscito nel 1949, anche questo come i precedenti passato senza clamore né successo.
È con quello dopo che esplode, se così si può dire: il suo quarto romanzo è anche quello suo più famoso, The Killer Inside Me, quello che lo portò a incontrare e collaborare con Stanley Kubrick.
Il sommo regista definì il romanzo:
la descrizione in prima persona più agghiacciante e credibile di una mente corrotta dal crimine in cui mi sia mai imbattuto.
E coinvolse Thompson nel suo esordio, The Killing – Rapina a mano armata, per il quale Thompson curò i dialoghi e Kubrick la struttura della trama.
L’anno dopo bissarono la collaborazione nel capolavoro Paths of Glory – Orizzonti di gloria, magnifico inno antimilitarista (e non solo).
Avviando così un canale diretto col mondo del cinema che da lì in avanti ha spesso attinto alla sua narrativa: tra originali e remake, film cinema e film tv, si contano altri diciotto titoli, con almeno altre tre gemme, The Getaway, splendidamente diretto da Sam Peckinpah e altrettanto splendidamente interpretato da Steve McQueen, Coup de torchon, magia registica di un Bertrand Tavernier particolarmente in forma, e The Grifters – Rischiose abitudini dove Stephen Frears dirige al suo meglio un trio di interpreti sopraffini, Annette Bening, Anjelica Huston e John Cusack.
I suoi protagonisti, fascinosamente corrotti, oscuri e ambigui, maledettamente divertenti, hanno debiti diretti con la vera vita di Jim Thompson, in particolare con la figura paterna: il padre dello scrittore, Jim Thompson senior, era uno sceriffo un po’ cowboy che a un certo punto diventò petroliere avendo avuto la sorte di scavare e trovare giacimento. Ma non sono sicuro che non abbia continuato a fare la vecchia attività mentre portava avanti la nuova, tra legalità traballante e affarismo, fino alla successiva rovina e fallimento.
Nel suo piccolo (per me grande), Thompson era una risposta all’America dei suoi tempi, serrata nella rigidità della Guerra Fredda, in pieno periodo di maccartismo: a quelle rigide dicotomie, comunismo/democrazia, totalitarismo/libertà, moralità/immoralità, Thompson ha opposto la sua descrizione di un mondo popolato da gente ambigua, corrotta e violenta, spesso dalla mente deformata. Nulla a che vedere con stato, chiesa, famiglia (dio, patria, famiglia?).
February 10, 2012
John Wilmot, part-owner of a troubled theater, and his estranged wife hatch a scheme to fake her death for the insurance money. The plan seems to go off without a hitch, but pressure mounts as the wolves come after John from every angle...
This sojourny into Jim Thompson's cheerful world is much the same as some of the others. A man hatches a plan and then comes apart as the pressure builds. John, his wife Elizabeth, and his pseudo-mistress Carol fake Elizabeth's death, John and Carol having rock solid alibis. Or so it seemed at the time. Most of the rest of the cast are scumbags of varying degrees.
Thompson mines the seedy underbelly of the movie theater industry for a rich vein of noir gold in this one. As the wheels come off the plan, you feel for Wilmot as he makes misstep after misstep and can't do anything to stop it. The final twist at the end is what bumped this up to four star territory for me.
The writing is stark and powerful, just what you expect from Jim Thompson. I liked that Thompson himself makes a cameo appearance in this story. As usual, Thompson has some great lines, like What smells good in the store may stink in the stewpot.
I'd rate this one slightly lower than Hell of a Woman but higher than a lot of Jim Thompson's other books. I'd call it a low 4 or a 3+.
This sojourny into Jim Thompson's cheerful world is much the same as some of the others. A man hatches a plan and then comes apart as the pressure builds. John, his wife Elizabeth, and his pseudo-mistress Carol fake Elizabeth's death, John and Carol having rock solid alibis. Or so it seemed at the time. Most of the rest of the cast are scumbags of varying degrees.
Thompson mines the seedy underbelly of the movie theater industry for a rich vein of noir gold in this one. As the wheels come off the plan, you feel for Wilmot as he makes misstep after misstep and can't do anything to stop it. The final twist at the end is what bumped this up to four star territory for me.
The writing is stark and powerful, just what you expect from Jim Thompson. I liked that Thompson himself makes a cameo appearance in this story. As usual, Thompson has some great lines, like What smells good in the store may stink in the stewpot.
I'd rate this one slightly lower than Hell of a Woman but higher than a lot of Jim Thompson's other books. I'd call it a low 4 or a 3+.
September 18, 2022
“Nothing More Than Murder,” first published in 1949, was Jim Thompson’s first major success and was followed in 1952 by the book most critics agree is his magnum opus (“The Killer Inside Me”). On the surface, “Nothing More Than Murder” might appear to be yet another twist on James Cain’s “Double Indemnity.” Here, the husband (Joe Wilmot) has an affair with Carol. There’s a double indemnity insurance policy on the wife (Elizabeth), who is seemingly murdered in a bizarre film editing accident.
But, this is a Jim Thompson book and the basic idea of the three-sided romance is twisted in quite a different way. What if the wife accepts that the marriage has gone to hell in a hand basket and offers to step aside if she can collect the insurance money? After all, all you would need is a body somewhat resembling the wife and it doesn’t really matter where you find that body, does it?
Moreover, this is not a simple tale of lust and greed and guilt tearing one apart (as if such a tale were ever simple). This is a Jim Thompson novel and it is a world where seemingly everyone is greedy, dirty, underhanded, and conniving. Joe Wilmot is not a basically decent guy. Make no mistake about that. Never mind the adultery or the murder conspiracy. He is in the movie theater business and he is involved in underhanded, sneaky deals to stifle any competition in his small city and to undermine the union rules. He is as cagey as a shark.
And, in the end, everyone seems to put together how he has put more than one over on them. In typical Thompson fashion, the walls start closing in on Wilmot and the noose around his neck gets squeezed tighter and tighter.
But, this is a Jim Thompson book and the basic idea of the three-sided romance is twisted in quite a different way. What if the wife accepts that the marriage has gone to hell in a hand basket and offers to step aside if she can collect the insurance money? After all, all you would need is a body somewhat resembling the wife and it doesn’t really matter where you find that body, does it?
Moreover, this is not a simple tale of lust and greed and guilt tearing one apart (as if such a tale were ever simple). This is a Jim Thompson novel and it is a world where seemingly everyone is greedy, dirty, underhanded, and conniving. Joe Wilmot is not a basically decent guy. Make no mistake about that. Never mind the adultery or the murder conspiracy. He is in the movie theater business and he is involved in underhanded, sneaky deals to stifle any competition in his small city and to undermine the union rules. He is as cagey as a shark.
And, in the end, everyone seems to put together how he has put more than one over on them. In typical Thompson fashion, the walls start closing in on Wilmot and the noose around his neck gets squeezed tighter and tighter.
February 3, 2024
05/2019
This is Thompson's first crime novel, from 1949. Maybe he got better with things like plot and exposition, but this, the narrator, is classic Thompson. So of course it ended up being dark, weird and satisfying.
This is Thompson's first crime novel, from 1949. Maybe he got better with things like plot and exposition, but this, the narrator, is classic Thompson. So of course it ended up being dark, weird and satisfying.
November 30, 2022
This is early Thompson, just his third novel, published in 1949 and is in the style of the sort of literary crime that had come before, Chandler, Hammett, Cain, etc, in dramatic prose interspersed by with low-brow slang, wisecracks and the jargon of criminals of the day. Subsequent novels were more of his own thing, his sinister throng of corrupt police, cunning con-artists and psychopathic murderers, moving away from the classic hard-boiled hero of the 40s.
Movie house owner Joe Wilmot is caught by his wife Elizabeth in flagrante with Carol, the housemaid. She makes him a proposition; she will quit town and leave them to their own devices so long as her death is faked and she receives the insurance money.
Its certainly a plan, but Thompson's problem is in having described his key characters, convincing the reader that they would be capable of planning and delivering such an arrangement.
Perhaps that's why it is not surprising when things go wrong.
Besides, there is limited value in srutinising plots for plausibility in Thompson's work - its missing the point when there is so much else to enjoy, the sharp rose, the wit. Its just about credible, and even, ultimately rewarding.
Movie house owner Joe Wilmot is caught by his wife Elizabeth in flagrante with Carol, the housemaid. She makes him a proposition; she will quit town and leave them to their own devices so long as her death is faked and she receives the insurance money.
Its certainly a plan, but Thompson's problem is in having described his key characters, convincing the reader that they would be capable of planning and delivering such an arrangement.
Perhaps that's why it is not surprising when things go wrong.
Besides, there is limited value in srutinising plots for plausibility in Thompson's work - its missing the point when there is so much else to enjoy, the sharp rose, the wit. Its just about credible, and even, ultimately rewarding.
September 16, 2022
When most people mention Jim Thompson, they mention the darkness. And sure, that’s there, but the more I read of him, the more the strangeness sticks out. People tend to regard Charles Willeford as the genre’s great eccentric, but Thompson has to be right up there with him. There’s no real center to his characters or to their stories. They’re people whose consciences are blank (despite occasional proforma claims to the contrary) who inhabit a moral vacuum filled with other empty shells of former men and women.
Is it some sort of collective hangover from the Second World War, and the Great Depression before that, which just exhausted the hell out of everybody?
Whatever it was, it’s on full display in Nothing More than Murder. It follows the wheeling and dealing of a man in a small town who runs a little moviehouse in conjunction with his wife. They may love each other or despise each other, or perhaps both. The main protagonist seems to spend a lot of time reflecting, but it’s really just rationalization, cold and reptilian while pretending to the mammalian.
His wife hires a young, sort of attractive girl to work at the movie theater for reasons the man, this reader, and maybe the writer himself can never quite explicate. A plot is hatched, a murder is committed for insurance money, and then the tangled web grows even more intricately knotted. To say much more would be to give a little too much of the game away.
Thompson has been called a dimestore Dostoyevsky, which is true up to a point, especially in this book. It is about a man involved with murder, who, in dealing with his inquisitor, is in some way dealing with his own soul and his guilt. Except this guy, unlike Raskolnikov, is only worried about guilt in the legal and literal sense, not the Christian one, and his soul...well, we already talked about that.
Overall it’s a good book, though its suspense elements are somehow undermined by the neutral cadence of the narrator’s voice. As an existential foray into a world where people define their worth and meaning by who they screw over and how hard, it’s a pulpy, poor man’s The Stranger.
But “Dimestore Camus,” doesn’t give you that fun plosive alliteration you get with the “Dimestore Dostoyevsky” one. Recommended for the dark and odd, who like their dishes served ice-cold.
Is it some sort of collective hangover from the Second World War, and the Great Depression before that, which just exhausted the hell out of everybody?
Whatever it was, it’s on full display in Nothing More than Murder. It follows the wheeling and dealing of a man in a small town who runs a little moviehouse in conjunction with his wife. They may love each other or despise each other, or perhaps both. The main protagonist seems to spend a lot of time reflecting, but it’s really just rationalization, cold and reptilian while pretending to the mammalian.
His wife hires a young, sort of attractive girl to work at the movie theater for reasons the man, this reader, and maybe the writer himself can never quite explicate. A plot is hatched, a murder is committed for insurance money, and then the tangled web grows even more intricately knotted. To say much more would be to give a little too much of the game away.
Thompson has been called a dimestore Dostoyevsky, which is true up to a point, especially in this book. It is about a man involved with murder, who, in dealing with his inquisitor, is in some way dealing with his own soul and his guilt. Except this guy, unlike Raskolnikov, is only worried about guilt in the legal and literal sense, not the Christian one, and his soul...well, we already talked about that.
Overall it’s a good book, though its suspense elements are somehow undermined by the neutral cadence of the narrator’s voice. As an existential foray into a world where people define their worth and meaning by who they screw over and how hard, it’s a pulpy, poor man’s The Stranger.
But “Dimestore Camus,” doesn’t give you that fun plosive alliteration you get with the “Dimestore Dostoyevsky” one. Recommended for the dark and odd, who like their dishes served ice-cold.
December 7, 2020
Joe Wilmot is the "Doc McCoy" of the small-town movie house racket. But I was too busy biting my nails to notice that I lost my bearings. I don't fully understand what happened. Maybe it was the overwhelming technical details of the theatre business. Or maybe it was Thompson's enjoyably roundabout storytelling. Or maybe I should stick to stories with lower-IQ characters like Dolly Dillon.
September 13, 2021
Thompson's first noir novel and I really enjoyed the unfolding of the insurance scam and then the complete undoing of Joe Wilmot as his enemies start putting the pinch on him from every angle. Fantastic twist at the end, too. Thompson cleverly keeps the details of the scam from us readers early on, but does it in a way that creates a lot of tension: Joe and his wife Elizabeth talk about what they are doing in the quite realistic way that people do who know what the subject is and don't need to mention every detail. So we know they are up to something but not exactly what. Of course, it all comes out as the action unfolds. Really liked the snarky way the insurance investigator just keeps setting Wilmot up; those were good scenes. Not so good was the way Thompson drifted into Wilmot's back story throughout the last two thirds of the novel. It really didn't add anything to the story. There was also a lot of details about the movie house business, some of it was interesting, but that could have been trimmed down, too for a faster-paced story line.
February 9, 2025
2.5⭐ I just couldn't get into this. I enjoyed the dialog but all the characters struck me as flat. It was an interesting plot but it involved folks I just didn't care about.
March 23, 2020
When I had finished my third Thompson novel, I felt like I had been outside walking on a dirt road with a strong wind, I had grit in my teeth. He puts quite a light on the human condition, and you know the light will never get brighter for these folk.
His observation on Mrs. Reverend Whitcomb - "I'd think she weighed around two-eighty. And she wasn't much taller than a quart of beer. She'd been going through doors sideways for so long that she kind of waltzed when she walked." He was one of the best.
His observation on Mrs. Reverend Whitcomb - "I'd think she weighed around two-eighty. And she wasn't much taller than a quart of beer. She'd been going through doors sideways for so long that she kind of waltzed when she walked." He was one of the best.
April 16, 2025
Thompson's debut novel isn't quite as polished as his more famous work, such as The Killer Inside Me, but it has many of the same qualities that makes him such a good, and unique, writer. The main downside on this was not knowing half of the terms for the movie theater/cinema and it took half the book for me to get around that. When that is replaced more by Thompson's usual speedy unravelling/downfall of the protagonist, it elevates it a level. Still a very good read.
December 26, 2011
Creepy small town larceny opera about a sleazy movie theatre owner trying to pull a double indemnity scam with the aid of his wife AND his cross-eyed mistress. This was Jim Thompson's first venture into what loosely could be termed the noir format, and it shows the master not quite there, but definitely setting his ducks up in a row.
The book is awfully chatty with too much movie exhibitor shop talk that doesn't necessarily enhance the story, but Thompson nevertheless gets his creepy-cum-psycho vibe warmed up so he can set the stage for the real sickness that was to come.
The book is awfully chatty with too much movie exhibitor shop talk that doesn't necessarily enhance the story, but Thompson nevertheless gets his creepy-cum-psycho vibe warmed up so he can set the stage for the real sickness that was to come.
June 17, 2015
They don't get more hardboiled than this. Thompson's novel is breathtakingly plotted with some fantastic characterisation. The prose is razor-sharp and rattles along with the final few pages absolutely gripping. Small-town cinema owner Joe Wilmot racks up a number of quick decisions when making an insurance claim over his wife's death, but a loose word here or there threatens to destroy his house of cards. I won't say more as it might jeopardise the plot, but this is my favourite Thomson novel out of those that I've read and is essential reading.
May 6, 2025
Movie Theaters
Better than his previous two. Learned something about movie theaters, but who cares about movie theaters?
Besides, I don't read books to learn things anyway. I can make up my own lies and don't need anyone's help.
Better than his previous two. Learned something about movie theaters, but who cares about movie theaters?
Besides, I don't read books to learn things anyway. I can make up my own lies and don't need anyone's help.
June 3, 2021
Noir from the sketchy side of town, everyone is a little shady and out for what they can get. Jim Thompson shows how the best laid plans. Murder is involved and some kind of love, but not the healthy kind. He also gives us an insider's look at the movie theater business in 1949. Thompson himself makes a cameo, which is fun. The writing is as hard-boiled and tough and clever as we want and expect. But what really drives the story is a bundle of contrasting motivations, the question being what's love got to do with it and who's going to come out on top. But maybe the reader knows all along. Because this is noir.
May 9, 2023
Mystery box book #3!
Broke: conspiring with your lover to murder your spouse for the insurance money.
Woke: conspiring with your lover and your spouse to murder a stranger for the insurance money!
...except of course it all goes wrong and, because it's Jim Thompson, everyone and everything is very squalid and unpleasant the whole time.
I enjoyed the details of Joe scheming to cheaply run his movie theater, but the grimy, nasty feel of this type of noir was just not what I was in the mood for. Sorry, mystery box.
Broke: conspiring with your lover to murder your spouse for the insurance money.
Woke: conspiring with your lover and your spouse to murder a stranger for the insurance money!
...except of course it all goes wrong and, because it's Jim Thompson, everyone and everything is very squalid and unpleasant the whole time.
I enjoyed the details of Joe scheming to cheaply run his movie theater, but the grimy, nasty feel of this type of noir was just not what I was in the mood for. Sorry, mystery box.
May 14, 2015
Joe Wilmot married the older Elizabeth Barclay some years ago on the basis of love -- the love they both had for her family's cinema ("show") in a half-forgotten town. Joe has since then made a success out of the business, thanks largely to his near-obsessive chiseling and chicanery: if he hasn't underpaid someone today he regards the day as a failure. Since Elizabeth is as mean as he is, it'd seem to be a professional marriage made in heaven. The only trouble with it is that he and Elizabeth have come to hate each other's guts.
When Elizabeth finds him in the arms of their housemaid, Carol, matters come to a head. They hatch a plan whereby Carol will lure some anonymous, unattached woman to the town with promises of a job, then kill her in what will look like an accidental fire. Elizabeth will skip town, and the assumption of the authorities will surely be that it was she who perished in the "accident." In exchange for the insurance money, she'll make a new life for herself somewhere else. If Carol were a beauty there might be a snag in that the cops would regard Joe as having an obvious motive to kill Elizabeth; but Carol's pigeon-toed and a bit cross-eyed, and the only person who sees anything appealing in her is Joe.
Everything seems to go like clockwork, the cops declare themselves satisfied it was an accidental death, and the charred corpse is buried. Yet out of the woodwork promptly crawl some of the old foes Joe has created for himself through his chiseling, and it's clear they have strong suspicions that there's been foul play. Soon he finds himself being blackmailed in all directions. And there's worse. The outwardly friendly insurance investigator Appleton seems to be taking an awful long time agreeing with the cops that the fire was an accident. Meanwhile Sol Panzer, owner of a major chain of cinemas, is giving Joe an offer he can't refuse for the Barclay cinema. Trouble is, it's a lousy offer.
But still Joe believes he can manipulate and scheme his way around all these obstacles, so that he and Carol can come out ahead and be free to live their lives together . . .
This was one of Thompson's earliest crime/hardboiled novels and it isn't one of his greats, yet it's by no means a negligible piece. The narrative is quite sophisticated: rather than follow a straightforward linear form, he twists the chronology in the way we've come to associate with film noir and more especially neonoir. While Joe's character is strikingly depicted -- he's truly a repellent specimen, though at the same time it's somehow hard not to identify with him -- the characters of the two women are far less so. We build up something of an understanding of Elizabeth (in large part thanks to the narrative's enfolding of layers of backstory), but Carol remains not much more than a cipher -- a cipher with mighty gazumbas, that being about as much of her personality as Joe seems to notice. A couple of the supporting cast come through much more clearly, notable the insurance investigator Appleton.
Thompson isn't everybody's cup of tea -- your mother might not approve of his wallowing among folk who're either scuzzy or scuzzier, and some readers do have trouble with protagonists who're despicable. For me, though, this was a page-turner, its suspense coming not so much from any thrill of the events but through watching the patient laying-out of all the interwoven strands that will eventually, no matter how much Joe might believe otherwise, lead to his inevitable doom. A bonus is that there's lots of (I assume authentic) detail of how the movie-theater business used to be run.
All in all, I'm glad I chose this novel as a contribution to the Past Offences Century of Crime series, this month's year being 1949.
When Elizabeth finds him in the arms of their housemaid, Carol, matters come to a head. They hatch a plan whereby Carol will lure some anonymous, unattached woman to the town with promises of a job, then kill her in what will look like an accidental fire. Elizabeth will skip town, and the assumption of the authorities will surely be that it was she who perished in the "accident." In exchange for the insurance money, she'll make a new life for herself somewhere else. If Carol were a beauty there might be a snag in that the cops would regard Joe as having an obvious motive to kill Elizabeth; but Carol's pigeon-toed and a bit cross-eyed, and the only person who sees anything appealing in her is Joe.
Everything seems to go like clockwork, the cops declare themselves satisfied it was an accidental death, and the charred corpse is buried. Yet out of the woodwork promptly crawl some of the old foes Joe has created for himself through his chiseling, and it's clear they have strong suspicions that there's been foul play. Soon he finds himself being blackmailed in all directions. And there's worse. The outwardly friendly insurance investigator Appleton seems to be taking an awful long time agreeing with the cops that the fire was an accident. Meanwhile Sol Panzer, owner of a major chain of cinemas, is giving Joe an offer he can't refuse for the Barclay cinema. Trouble is, it's a lousy offer.
But still Joe believes he can manipulate and scheme his way around all these obstacles, so that he and Carol can come out ahead and be free to live their lives together . . .
This was one of Thompson's earliest crime/hardboiled novels and it isn't one of his greats, yet it's by no means a negligible piece. The narrative is quite sophisticated: rather than follow a straightforward linear form, he twists the chronology in the way we've come to associate with film noir and more especially neonoir. While Joe's character is strikingly depicted -- he's truly a repellent specimen, though at the same time it's somehow hard not to identify with him -- the characters of the two women are far less so. We build up something of an understanding of Elizabeth (in large part thanks to the narrative's enfolding of layers of backstory), but Carol remains not much more than a cipher -- a cipher with mighty gazumbas, that being about as much of her personality as Joe seems to notice. A couple of the supporting cast come through much more clearly, notable the insurance investigator Appleton.
Thompson isn't everybody's cup of tea -- your mother might not approve of his wallowing among folk who're either scuzzy or scuzzier, and some readers do have trouble with protagonists who're despicable. For me, though, this was a page-turner, its suspense coming not so much from any thrill of the events but through watching the patient laying-out of all the interwoven strands that will eventually, no matter how much Joe might believe otherwise, lead to his inevitable doom. A bonus is that there's lots of (I assume authentic) detail of how the movie-theater business used to be run.
All in all, I'm glad I chose this novel as a contribution to the Past Offences Century of Crime series, this month's year being 1949.
November 18, 2019
This is a 3.5/5 book.
After writing two novels that did not sell, Jim Thompson wrote, "Nothing More Than Murder", his first crime novel. After this book Thompson wrote almost a dozen of the greatest crime novels ever released. However, "Nothing More Than Murder", suffers from signs of a writer dipping his feet in the bloody water, but not as of yet, diving fully in. The story centres around Joe Wilmot, owner of the finest movie house in a small town, married to an angry wife who brings a woman in to help around the house that her husband ends up bedding. A scheme is hatched, Joe's wife dies in a projection booth that burns to bits, and there's a man holding onto his surname that wants to maintain his influence in the town. An insurance investigator, a seemingly-careless police force, and Joe's assorted flunky peers play a role in what turns into another story of a simple man thinking too large and then spiralling down lower than where he started.
There's traces of what makes Jim Thompson the best crime author, bits that display what to expect starting with his next published novel: a man in a questionable relationship with an argumentative wife and a more alluring and mysterious woman on the side falling from the thin layer of earth he begins at and ends up smothered in the psychological heat of hell; the sparse, no-nonsense prose that creates an atmosphere of an inescapable, gloomy foreboding; the unhinged female characters that hide within secrets or are as purely hateful and heartless inside as outside; down-and-out side characters, some are working menial jobs, and most lack ambition, beg for work, backstab, and are content being the nothing-men that they are; physical violence rendered with a detached horror and frankness that are barely provided here, but the little that is, feels like Thompson testing what he can get away with; and, of course, a worldview that looks at humanity like a bunch of self-interested creatures willing to do nearly any crime for even the smallest reward against friends and strangers, a pessimistic rendering of a self-serving population who can do nobody, not even themselves, any good in their fight just to exist.
But, "Nothing More Than Murder", never becomes what it could have, and, instead, settles for being a safer attempt at a crime story that would entertain, but not shock, fans of the short stories in an, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", collection. It's a must read for Thompson fans, and it might, in lacking the bold, daring, bloody, and psychologically uncomfortable mood of his finest novels, be enjoyed by fans of the crime genre who scorn Thompson for being so wicked.
After writing two novels that did not sell, Jim Thompson wrote, "Nothing More Than Murder", his first crime novel. After this book Thompson wrote almost a dozen of the greatest crime novels ever released. However, "Nothing More Than Murder", suffers from signs of a writer dipping his feet in the bloody water, but not as of yet, diving fully in. The story centres around Joe Wilmot, owner of the finest movie house in a small town, married to an angry wife who brings a woman in to help around the house that her husband ends up bedding. A scheme is hatched, Joe's wife dies in a projection booth that burns to bits, and there's a man holding onto his surname that wants to maintain his influence in the town. An insurance investigator, a seemingly-careless police force, and Joe's assorted flunky peers play a role in what turns into another story of a simple man thinking too large and then spiralling down lower than where he started.
There's traces of what makes Jim Thompson the best crime author, bits that display what to expect starting with his next published novel: a man in a questionable relationship with an argumentative wife and a more alluring and mysterious woman on the side falling from the thin layer of earth he begins at and ends up smothered in the psychological heat of hell; the sparse, no-nonsense prose that creates an atmosphere of an inescapable, gloomy foreboding; the unhinged female characters that hide within secrets or are as purely hateful and heartless inside as outside; down-and-out side characters, some are working menial jobs, and most lack ambition, beg for work, backstab, and are content being the nothing-men that they are; physical violence rendered with a detached horror and frankness that are barely provided here, but the little that is, feels like Thompson testing what he can get away with; and, of course, a worldview that looks at humanity like a bunch of self-interested creatures willing to do nearly any crime for even the smallest reward against friends and strangers, a pessimistic rendering of a self-serving population who can do nobody, not even themselves, any good in their fight just to exist.
But, "Nothing More Than Murder", never becomes what it could have, and, instead, settles for being a safer attempt at a crime story that would entertain, but not shock, fans of the short stories in an, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", collection. It's a must read for Thompson fans, and it might, in lacking the bold, daring, bloody, and psychologically uncomfortable mood of his finest novels, be enjoyed by fans of the crime genre who scorn Thompson for being so wicked.
June 30, 2015
A peculiar book by the master of noir, his first big success. A small-town movie house operator married to an older woman (who owns the theater) starts an affair with the younger woman his wife brings in as a housekeeper; the wife catches them in the act. Instead of going after them with the rolling pin she offers to get out of their lives, provided they help her fake her death and then deliver the money from the life insurance to her. What could go wrong?
The book is full of the nuts and bolts of the movie business at the retail level, with chiseling distributors, thin profit margins, projectionists' union thuggery and more, all the things we were blissfully unaware of as we took in the Saturday matinee with two cartoons. It is also, of course, a sharp portrayal of stunted, unhappy people in what they imagine is love. Vintage Thompson, in short.
The book is full of the nuts and bolts of the movie business at the retail level, with chiseling distributors, thin profit margins, projectionists' union thuggery and more, all the things we were blissfully unaware of as we took in the Saturday matinee with two cartoons. It is also, of course, a sharp portrayal of stunted, unhappy people in what they imagine is love. Vintage Thompson, in short.
June 18, 2009
With his third novel, Jim Thompson arrives in the world of noir, though he has not yet discovered his distinctively creepy voice. I wasn't sure what to make of Nothing More Than Murder's clumsy plotting as its chronology lurched artlessly around while its backstory came and went. If this were a third-person narrative, I would diagnose an evolving writer feeling his way through a new style of writing, but the narrative is written in the first person, so perhaps this clumsiness is an intentional reflection on its narrator. And perhaps, because this is Jim Thompson, I give him the benefit of the doubt.
November 15, 2017
Thompson's one of my favorites but this one didn't land for me. It lacks the action and suspense of his best work. There's also constant insider talk about the movie theater industry, which frequently went over my head. It still held my interest because of the excellent dialogue and the protagonist's sense of doom.
August 26, 2017
I have read that if one wants to read the master of crime story writers, Jim Thompson is the guy. Based on this story, I can see why readers, and critics, would say that. Thompson puts the reader in the villain’s head, to suffer along with him as the crime is committed and then as he struggles to keep from being proven guilty. The reader does not really root for the villain, and perhaps even assumes he will be found out. But the reader is very interested in how the struggle takes place. Thompson does not try to explain the world the villain lives in, but just goes ahead assuming the reader is intelligent enough to follow, and the reader does. The writer died in 1977. I’m not sure if that was before the age of pulp fiction, but I can easily see that he could be considered a pioneer of this genre.
May 1, 2020
"They can’t hang me. I’m already dead. I’ve been dead a long, long time."
Like a Coen bros movie. A small town theater owner's murder scheme goes horribly wrong with everyone around trying to get a piece of the pie. Solid early Thompson.
Like a Coen bros movie. A small town theater owner's murder scheme goes horribly wrong with everyone around trying to get a piece of the pie. Solid early Thompson.
March 24, 2022
Nothing More Than Murder is near the top of the heap of Thompson novels I’ve read recently. It’s the story of a seedy, opportunistic theater-owner, his loveless marriage, and the life insurance scam he, his wife, and his mistress come up with together. All they need is a victim… Suffice to say their little murder scheme goes awry (whaaat?!) and we are stuck in the paranoid, tense world of our narrator. The book’s final twist was no less cruel for the fact that I predicted it well ahead of time; in some ways, the inevitability of it made it all the crueler. Thompson has an astounding talent for writing characters half under the microscope, trying to operate in secrecy and never knowing until the end how much they’ve succeeded or failed. He also writes about the world of theater-ownership with believable detail; unscrupulous characters abound, each playing their part in a sort of chess game Thompson’s playing with the reader. Thompson is a master of revealing exactly as much as he wants us to see; the final revelation is all the more shocking when the shadows are drawn back and we see how much (or how little) is left of the world.
August 28, 2025
Great novel, love JT as an author, he just creates books with minimal fuss and characters that stay with you.
August 24, 2023
Best Jim Thompson I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a few!
March 11, 2021
A slow start with a lot of in the weeds Movie Theater business talk, but once it comes together, this love triangle/double indemnity plot takes off.
Joe has some real Howard Ratner vibes going on here.
Joe has some real Howard Ratner vibes going on here.
July 5, 2021
I was spurred to read this from a Goodreads group I’ve joined which is purportedly reading lesser-known works of fairly well-known authors. They are reading The Killer Inside, but I picked this one because I decided a few years back to read all of Thompson (or until I realize he’s unworthy) in sequence. As such, this is his third novel.
This book takes some orientation, I found myself slightly distracted on vacation (in Hilton Head SC) and after the first chapter was a few days old I had to start over. The narrator is unreliable, as we say, in that he is revealed to the reader in the way he speaks and in the views of the other characters. This is a neat trick, and the revelation is a nifty device that engaged this reader. Our protagonist owns a movie theatre, one of the bigger “houses” in a smaller city, always on the edge of success in a tough industry where he rents film on the “exchanges” and cuts every corner possible to stay solvent and in the black. We learn he married a woman older by 10 years, a slightly fading beauty and a conniver to match Joe (our protagonist). He has married into the business, and has made it profitable in a dog-eat-dog world (I’m guessing California, but we aren’t actually told where the town of Stoneville resides). This novel is “noir” in the classic sense, written in 1949, and what I really loved is rich details of life in that time and place, from the habits of drinking coffee and the meals and even the wallpaper. It was a time before television in houses (set in the 30s I would guess), and the talk is witty, humorous and revealing. The author seems to be talking to the reader, even correcting his English (a sign that our protagonist is trying to integrate into our more sophisticated world where verb tense matters). Ultimately we find that crafty Joe isn’t quite as smart as he thinks (he always had an element of doubt) and is tricked by his partners, his wife and his girlfriend. This leads to a collision course as he gets a painful comeuppance, and the perfect murder is an unwieldy and high risk venture, doomed to failure.
This I read for relief while toiling through Sinclair’s The Jungle on vacation in SC. These two books were often in my hand as I sat in the early morning humid salt air, interrupted by our political porch conversations with my father in law and others. It was a strange vacation year for us as we are coming off the first year (2020) where we did not go to Hilton Head, and even this year we missed my brother in law who was absent due to his wife having odd fevers in the afternoon (still a mystery but not so dire). Simultaneous, we learned my learned father in law has cancer at the age of 87. The man’s a giant and one of my closest friends. So this memory, and the agony of fear and doubt it brings, will forever be intertwined with this novel. He is my other reading buddy, and traditionally I bring a shelf of books for our short vacation week, and he is always the one that actually reads the books I bring. So I select for him some that will challenge and yet entertain. I so enjoy our conversations on books, politics, religion and the problems of the world. But I digress. This book was good but so far the weakest of the 3 Thompson novels I’ve read. But I will continue, this man has talent & always is a joy.
This book takes some orientation, I found myself slightly distracted on vacation (in Hilton Head SC) and after the first chapter was a few days old I had to start over. The narrator is unreliable, as we say, in that he is revealed to the reader in the way he speaks and in the views of the other characters. This is a neat trick, and the revelation is a nifty device that engaged this reader. Our protagonist owns a movie theatre, one of the bigger “houses” in a smaller city, always on the edge of success in a tough industry where he rents film on the “exchanges” and cuts every corner possible to stay solvent and in the black. We learn he married a woman older by 10 years, a slightly fading beauty and a conniver to match Joe (our protagonist). He has married into the business, and has made it profitable in a dog-eat-dog world (I’m guessing California, but we aren’t actually told where the town of Stoneville resides). This novel is “noir” in the classic sense, written in 1949, and what I really loved is rich details of life in that time and place, from the habits of drinking coffee and the meals and even the wallpaper. It was a time before television in houses (set in the 30s I would guess), and the talk is witty, humorous and revealing. The author seems to be talking to the reader, even correcting his English (a sign that our protagonist is trying to integrate into our more sophisticated world where verb tense matters). Ultimately we find that crafty Joe isn’t quite as smart as he thinks (he always had an element of doubt) and is tricked by his partners, his wife and his girlfriend. This leads to a collision course as he gets a painful comeuppance, and the perfect murder is an unwieldy and high risk venture, doomed to failure.
This I read for relief while toiling through Sinclair’s The Jungle on vacation in SC. These two books were often in my hand as I sat in the early morning humid salt air, interrupted by our political porch conversations with my father in law and others. It was a strange vacation year for us as we are coming off the first year (2020) where we did not go to Hilton Head, and even this year we missed my brother in law who was absent due to his wife having odd fevers in the afternoon (still a mystery but not so dire). Simultaneous, we learned my learned father in law has cancer at the age of 87. The man’s a giant and one of my closest friends. So this memory, and the agony of fear and doubt it brings, will forever be intertwined with this novel. He is my other reading buddy, and traditionally I bring a shelf of books for our short vacation week, and he is always the one that actually reads the books I bring. So I select for him some that will challenge and yet entertain. I so enjoy our conversations on books, politics, religion and the problems of the world. But I digress. This book was good but so far the weakest of the 3 Thompson novels I’ve read. But I will continue, this man has talent & always is a joy.
May 24, 2013
Rated his best by some tho there are definitely up to 5 alternatives to that plaudit (The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me. The Grifters. Pop 1280 & my personal favourite South Of Heaven which I'll be rereading soon) this is still a classic and fascinating look at how the grind of impoverished daily life can slide almost imperceptibly into extreme violence and depravity, with early material and emotional deprivation being the lubricant. Also a fascinating account of the nuts & bolts of running a cinema in the 40s in Texas, As ever I love how he describes in brutally honest detail the psychological processes that shape behaviour without a hint of moralism.
November 14, 2025
Thompson's last book in hardcover before he became part of the great American paperback noir renaissance. Like James Cain on nitrous oxide, Thompson embraces the budding crime genre with unhealthy vigor. Told by a protagonist apparently without redeeming qualities, possibly insane, it's a tale destined to end tragically for someone, maybe everyone. Apart from the excellent sparse prose, I liked the setting, the world of low-end movie theaters in the 1940s, our hero navigating gangsters, swindlers, and human sharks of every sort while plotting murder. Excellent fiction and a good view of its era.
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