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Acclaim for Jim Thompson

  “The best suspense writer going, bar none.”

  —New York Times

  “My favorite crime novelist—often imitated but never duplicated.”

  —Stephen King

  “If Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Cornell Woolrich would have joined together in some ungodly union and produced a literary offspring, Jim Thompson would be it.…His work casts a dazzling light on the human condition.”

  —Washington Post

  “Like Clint Eastwood’s pictures it’s the stuff for rednecks, truckers, failures, psychopaths and professors.…One of the finest American writers and the most frightening, Thompson is on best terms with the devil. Read Jim Thompson and take a tour of hell.”

  —New Republic

  “The master of the American groin-kick novel.”

  —Vanity Fair

  “The most hard-boiled of all the American writers of crime fiction.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  Contents

  Title Page

  Welcome Page

  1: Doc Luther

  2: Cosgrove

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

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  18

  19

  20

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  22

  23

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  About the Author

  Preview of The Criminal

  Books by Jim Thompson

  Acclaim for Jim Thompson

  Copyright

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright 1953 by Jim Thompson

  Copyright © renewed 1981 by Alberta H. Thompson

  Excerpt from The Criminal copyright © 1953 by Jim Thompson, copyright © renewed 1981 by Alberta H. Thompson

  Author photograph by Sharon Thompson Reed

  Cover design by Allison J. Warner; cover art: Getty Images

  Cover copyright © 2012 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  www.mulhollandbooks.com/jimthompson

  www.twitter.com/mulhollandbooks

  www.facebook.com/mulhollandbooks

  www.hachettebookgroup.com

  First e-book edition: July 2012

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-316-19607-9