The Criminal (Mulholland Classic) by Jim Thompson

The Criminal (Mulholland Classic) Reviews

• 
  Dan Schwent

  A teenage girl is found raped and murdered and a boy who was known to have sex with her is the prime suspect. The newspaper turns the case into a circus and the town turns against the boy? Did he do it? And will it even matter when the dust settles?
  
  This wasn't quite what I expected from old Mr. Happy, Jim Thompson. Yeah, it has the feel of a lot of Jim Thompson books in that all people are bastards but it wasn't quite as bleak as the others. Sure, the Talbert boy went through the wringer and his parents and the lawyers didn't have a picnic but the main characters got off kind of light.
  
  The thing that I really liked about The Criminal was the use of a variety of viewpoint characters. The Criminal is a pretty short book but Thompson used close to ten viewpoint characters and gave each a unique voice.
  
  While it didn't have the usual brutality of a Jim Thompson novel, The Criminal did a great job at showing Thompson's skill as a writer. I wouldn't say it's a top tier Thompson, it's shoulders above some of his weaker efforts. It's an easy three stars.
• 
  David

  The title of this low-key masterpiece (low key for Jim Thompson, anyway) is either highly ironic or an oblique reference to almost every character in the book (or, of course, maybe both). In the main, its title refers to Bob Talbert, a teenager accused of killing a girl after she seduces him. As the narrative progresses, however, the fate of our criminal (if criminal he be) becomes increasingly beside the point. The story is told by a series of first-person narrators, each representing less a perspective than an agenda. Thus, the narrators emerge as criminals of a different sort, self-interested and mostly unconcerned with the truth of the affair. Herein lies the title's irony, as The Criminal frustrates the focus that its title promises. Some of Thompson's most famous novels feature the psychological disintegration of their protagonists. In The Criminal, it is the plot itself that disintegrates.
• 
  Toby

  A Jim Thompson novella, a story of the effects a rape and murder has on several players involved with the case told from all points of view, except the dead girl, building a picture of a town and of events where nobody is really innocent of anything through shrewd observations of human behaviour. This is Thompson in 1953 writing about the death of the American dream, the death of the fallacy of small town innocence, the death of the traditional family, pretty much the death of everything except the person who died. Once more, he's ahead of his time. An enjoyable and thought provoking little piece, it's not going to blow you away but it will keep you flicking pages trying to discover the truth from a series of unreliable narrators.
• 
  Bill

  I was surprised and impressed with this novel. Although the writing style is clearly "Thompson", the structure and flow of the narrative was different, and the outcome was a real surprise. It is hard to say much more without spoilers, which I strive to avoid, so I will only say if you think you know Jim Thompson's work and haven't read this one yet, you owe it to yourself to read this novel as soon as possible.
• 
  Kurt Reichenbaugh

  Series of 1st person accounts of the major players surrounding a case of rape and murder of a teenage girl. Many of the narrations are savagely funny. All of them are dark confessions on the case and the outcome. Whatever truth means doesn't matter as much as getting over on the other guy does. The best and worst elements of Jim Thompson's writing style are displayed here. That's not a knock against the novel. It was likely written quickly, in a single draft with little editing. The best chapters are the early ones before the novel descends into a hell of its own making.
• 
  WJEP

  I liked this so much that I read Act 5 of Romeo and Juliet. I wanted to understand the significance of Thompson's epigraph. But the only thing I got from my effort was the desire for a dram of that poison.
  
  Thompson reveals his "loathsome world" using nine different first-person perspectives, starting with the dullard parents of the accused murderer. Thompson crafted each character to be uniquely crummy. This meanspirited story is mostly about exploiting the accused boy, but cynically, it's pretty clear that Bobbie did it.
• 
  Steven

  This is one of the Thompson books I hadn’t read before so had a chance to come to it fresh and was a bit surprised as it is essentially a polemic. The title is almost entirely ironic. I say almost because we are never given a clear sense of whether the “criminal” in question, the teenaged Bob Talbert, committed the rape and murder of which he is accused. What is clear, though, is that all of the other narrators in the novel are criminals because they are guilty of lying, or abuse of power, or some species of crime in a similar genus as Bob is clearly being railroaded toward a conviction. The novel then is an attack on the judicial system, the media (specifically newspapers of the time), and the court of public opinion.
  
  Thompson uses multiple first person narrators, which is a technique that showed up in a couple of other noirs from the same era that I’ve read recently: Fearing’s The Big Clock and MacDonald’s The Beach Girls (and as a side note I’m kind of curious who first used this technique in noir fiction, so if you know please chime in!). Here it does more than provide a range of perspectives on the case at hand because Thompson never provides a narrative viewpoint that has some objectivity from which to judge the various narratives. What each of the narrators does is convict themselves of their crimes via their narration. It’s a bit odd because who are they narrating to? It’s not as if they are telling their version to an investigator who is questioning them. Quite the contrary. These are freely offered, after the fact accounts, that make no effort to exonerate their narrator. In fact, they do the opposite. These narrative accounts reveal their narrators in the worst light, and it as if they do not realize that they are doing so. Fascinating technique.
• 
  Phil

  Growing up, I always wanted to like olives. But every time I put one in my mouth I winced and spat it out. For some reason, though, I wouldn't let things lie. Almost immediately I put another olive in my mouth. A grudging, perverse acceptance soon turned to outright fanaticism. And soon I was eating them directly out of the jar.
  
  I think it's fair to say, too, that I've had to acquire a taste for Jim Thompson. Let's face it -- the man's uncompromising view ain't changing for you, so you'd better shift your own view till you agree. To this day, though, I'm not sure what it is about even his classic works that leaves me with a slight taste of disappointment in my mouth.
  
  Yet always -- always -- I find myself going back for more. And I can say with my hand on my heart that once I've finished reading all his works, I'll go back to the start and read them all again.
  
  Some writers just get you that way, I guess. And for what it's worth, I'm glad Jim Thompson's got me.
  
  And so to The Criminal, which I have to say I assumed to be a very early work of his. It has the feeling of a writer experimenting with his voice -- his world view, even. But in fact, by this time he had already written The Killer Inside Me, Nothing More Than Murder, and Savage Night -- all of which you could pick out of a line-up as a Thompson novel from a mile off.
  
  But The Criminal is another beast entirely.
  
  Its story is of a young girl raped and murdered in a small town. The boy who lives next door is implicated in the crime, and nobody in town can quite believe that he is guilty. The girl was sexually precocious, and the intercourse she engaged in with the boy -- and others -- was entirely consensual. But external forces seem to want to force the hand of justice. The newspapers and the D.A.'s office seem to have their own agendas.
  
  When I say it feels like an author discovering his voice, what I mean is that while the world depicted in The Criminal is a noir-soaked, unforigiving one, it seems a lightweight depiction all the same. It wears no knuckle dusters and it definitely pulls its punches. Its characters are largely stupid, self-serving and amoral; but the story never plumbs the depths of, say, Pop. 1280 or A Swell-Looking Babe. The reader's head is not forced down into the gutter and held there until the final pages.
  
  What sets The Criminal apart from Thompson's more powerful works is its narrative style. Whereas the big hitters are exercises in suffocating madness, with the reader forced into a psychopath's company and never given respite from their warped psyche, The Criminal flits around from character to character, chapter by chapter, with the story allowed to build around the individuals' testimonies.
  
  Indeed, it is a kind of 'message novel.' Thompson even goes so far as to spell it out:
  
  "It's difficult to place a rope around a man's neck: the law, slowly evolving through the centuries, winding its way up through dungeons and torture chambers, emerging at last into the sunlight, intended it to be difficult [...] the law has changed, but people have not. They are still lingering back in the shadows; thumbs turned down on the fallen, hustling wood for the witch-burner, donning their bedsheets and boots at the first smell of blood."
  
  It almost seems trite of me to say that it's a message that still resonates today. It is, at least, a message that will resonate in any noir aficionado's dark and cynical heart.
  
  But as a message novel, it does lack punch. Most of the characters are only given one chapter to reveal themselves. It seems hurried, just like the police investigation itself, and the characters are never given room to breathe. It could use about another hundred and fifty pages.
  
  And I don't say that about many books, believe me.
  
  The only other Jim Thompson novel that I've been out and out let down by so far is The Kill-Off, another character-flitting novel that reads more like a dark-hearted soap opera.
  
  Whether this narrative style was an attempt by Thompson to write 'important' novels or not is hard to say. But ironically, his greatest literary -- yes, literary -- achievements were within the strict confines of the pulps, with audacious experiments and tricks that any self-indulgent high-falutin' wordsmith could only dream of. He took the pulps further than they had any right to go. His first-person descents into warped but real personal hells were unlike anything else of the kind I've read.
  
  Maybe that's why I still find myself needing to psyche myself up for them somewhat, and why I can never quite work out if I actually enjoyed them. And also why I keep coming back for more. Jim Thompson was so ahead of his time, and beyond his contemporaries, that I'm still not sure I'm ready for him yet.
  
  But one day, Jim, one day I'll get there...
• 
  Richard Schaefer

  First of all, the Criminal is not a crime novel… It’s one of Thompson’s more literary novels, and your mileage with it may vary based on that fact. It is written from a number of different perspectives, like Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, but mixed with an almost French existentialism. Whatever else I might feel about this book, Thompson does a great job of making each voice unique without falling back on lazy linguistic tricks or dialect (with one very notable and unpleasant exception). There is a murder at the core of the story (a fairly brutal one, in fact), but to call it a mystery would wrongly imply that the story provides resolution, which it doesn’t (hence the aforementioned existentialism). The only time the book falters is a chapter written from the perspective of a black child; while Thompson writes with attempted empathy, the thick dialect is painful to read. But then again, it’s painful in Faulkner and it’s painful in Twain, and at least Thompson avoids racial slurs. So while Thompson proves that he can pull this sort of book off, it’s just not what he does best (pitch black noir), and is therefore for Thompson completists only.
• 
  Gibson

  Questione di punti di vista
  
  Altro romanzo 'minore' (1953) di Thompson?
  Echissenefregatuttoattaccatocontantodipuntoesclamativo!
  
  Thompson ha il dono di una narrazione in prima persona capace di avvincere, rappresenta uno dei suoi segni distintivi.
  Qui, satelliti orbitanti intorno all'omicidio di un ragazza - ma è solo un fatto -, si diverte a proporne addirittura una decina come una sorta di camera degli specchi, in cui le responsabilità (dietro le quinte) dell'accaduto vengono distribuite come per gioco con la disinvoltura di un croupier professionista.
  
  Ma quel che più conta è il piacere di godersi ogni capitolo in compagnia di un soggetto per poi passare a quello successivo e incontrarne un altro, perché l'autore sa caratterizzare i suoi personaggi con una straordinaria precisione chirurgica, dai più moderati ai più iracondi, con quella leggerezza che fa sembrare semplice lo scrivere. Corre, ma lo fa dandoci l'impressione di camminare.
  
  Non è un capolavoro, ma è un Thompson. Ancora meglio.
• 
  Bobby

  A fourteen year old girl is found raped murdered.
  
  The prime suspect is a fourteen year old boy held in custody.
  
  The potentially salacious story is buried a few pages into the local paper. Without much evidence to hold him, the boy appears to be on the verge of being let go. That is until the ominous newspaper publisher (who only appears on the other end of phone calls) wonders if the story can be drummed up a bit to be a front page item. After all, he's in the newspaper business. And the dominoes begin to fall....
  
  Despite being originally published over sixty years ago, it’s tough to write about The Criminal by Jim Thompson without discussing how surprisingly relevant it is today. A quick little novella about the violent rape and murder of a fourteen year old girl and the teenage boy arrested for the crime. Told in alternating first-person narrative from everyone including the boy's mother and father, the newspaper editor, a beat reporter, attorney both of the prosecution and defense, in edition to others superficially involved in the case, the novella draws parallels to Netflix' Making a Murderer.
  
  The obviously parallel is between the fictional main suspect, Robert Talbert, and Brenden Dassey, the real life teen who was convicted of assisting his uncle, Steven Avery, in the murder of Teresa Halbach. Both were teenagers who found themselves alone, and in way over their heads in a situation in which they were easily manipulated by the agenda of whomever was questioning them at any given moment. Fans of the show will find it eerie how similar the scenes of Dassey’s confession are with the one in the novella where Talbert is coerced by the district attorney into admitting guilt. Later, when Talbert is interviewed by his own attorney, of course it’s an entirely different series of events. Where's the truth? Who knows? And as far as Jim Thompson is concerned, who cares?
  
  There is a moment in the story where Thompson could have just told us outright if the kid did it or not in a chapter narrated by Talbert, but Thompson ends the chapter right at the vital moment before the murder either occurred at the hands (around victim's throat) of Talbert or it didn’t. Instead, Thompson pulls away and doesn’t give the audience the perceived satisfaction of knowing if the boy is guilty or not. What that tells me is that for Thompson it doesn’t matter who the killer is. Therein lay the horror of the story. What matters is not the who of it all, it's the how. In particular, the how the killer is decided upon, by the press, by the D.A., and by the public.
  
  This story isn't a whodunit. The Criminal is a story of agenda and manipulation and not a search for the cold, honest truth. The cast of characters in The Criminal just want to get their way, and will use whatever version of the truth they can to expedite that process. Even Robert's parents aren't above it. One of the first anecdotes we hear from Allen Talbert (the boy's father) is how he framed his co-workers to cover up for the fact he used the bathroom too much at work. And it worked! He even got a raise out it... or at least the promise of a raise, which is just as good, right? But hey, a win's a win as Thompson plants the seeds of his theme right away.
  
  This is a gem of a novella. The alternating first-person chapters gives a sense chaos surrounding the plot which play in the story's favor. There's only one chapter towards the end where the language doesn't particularly age well, but it's there for a reason and serves a purpose.
  
  Fans of Thompson will find in this a restrained story without the macabre or portrayal of madness (descent into or otherwise firm) that typically accompanies at Thompson tale. Don't be fooled though, the madness is still there. It's just quietly bubbling at the surface for everyone to see, so no one pays it much mind.
  
  
  The Criminal by Jim Thompson - 4.5 out of 5 Influenced Confessions From A Kid Who Just Wants To Go Home.
• 
  ?0?0?0

  In a little more than one hundred pages, Jim Thompson explores the many facets of a horrendous crime committed against a young girl that would take any other writer a minimum of three-hundred pages. The title of "The Criminal" is slightly misleading: there's few characters in this multi-perspective narrative that are not some breed of criminal. We start first with the father, and then the mother, of a child who, allegedly, raped and strangled a neighbour girl to death, and then switch to the boy's point of view, and continue on going from one character's narration to another, including the district attorney, a couple newspaperman, a lawyer, and a black family. Thompson uses this way of storytelling reminiscent of his other masterpiece, "The Kill-Off", to examine the corruption stemming from a murder case. Every character is selfish and full of tricks, from the leading-question D.A, to the head of the newspaper desperate for his paper to succeed and his lackeys who can't help but sensationalize a story with half-truths and deceptions to sell papers at the cost of ruining a possibly-innocent boys life, the two parents unwilling to believe their son could behave such a way as they examine their role and the possible role of genetics in making an alleged rapist-murderer, and to the boy's lawyer, seemingly the most above board character in the story that's still not unwilling to bribe witnesses to testify. It all amounts to a story that's painfully all too real, yet not for a second does this read dated. It's an observant novel with a clear disdain, under the surface, of the way those out for themselves will distort a serious story at the cost of due process, proper professional procedure, and the law of the country. It's a short blast of a small town faced with a revolting crime, but in narrowing the scope, Thompson's able to draw out the issues that arise from an event such as the rape-murder that still continue all around the country, all around the world, and, sadly, not a thing has changed, if anything, the media and so-called activists have taken any slight progress back to a darker period of doling out justice. "The Criminal" is definitely one of my favourite Jim Thompson books.
• 
  David

  THE CRIMINAL is a simple story, one of murder and guilt (or lack there of). It uses the Thompson signature of the unreliable narrator better than anyone else, and undermines/underpins a narrative by changing character at least half a dozen times throughout the course of the tale. What sets THE CRIMINAL apart from the majority of Thompson's work is how current it still is. The case is tried in the papers, guilt is attributed and reinforced by the moulding of public opinion. It's incredibly thought provoking, relevant, intelligent and most of all frightening. Frightening to think that the difference between guilt and innocence, freedom and incarceration is perception.
• 
  Anders

  Short but bittersweet ...the building up to a sex crime was inevitable. After the deed happens the perspective changes, I have the sense Thompson makes the reader observe several viewpoints through various individuals eyes, simultaneously playing with ones sense of red thread, like a theatre play. Good read.
• 
  Tracy

  It is criminal not to love Jim Thompson's work!!!!
• 
  Jon

  The multiperspective narrative is not a mystery or thriller in any conventional sense. It's actually rather predictable. It's more of a character study and an indictment of the criminal justice system.
  
  The tale revolves around the rape and murder of a young woman. Each character has his or her own view as to whether the young man charged deserves to be. His parents recount how the son grew apart from the father and how he has been skipping school and how they had conflicts with the parents of the woman killed. The son describes how the event occurred, but the tale leaves off at a crucial moment, such that we as readers don't know whether the man did or did not do the killing; what we do learn, though, is that the man was seduced and the woman was not so innocent as one might think. Enter the legal system and the newspapermen. The latter want a good story to tell and thus promote a rape and murder scenario with the young man at the center. This means that though the DA may well have thought the man innocent, the legal system feels obligated to charge the teen. Nothing is about justice so much as about money and individuals' jobs and careers.
  
• 
  Nate Slade

  I liked the way Thompson performed head-hopping in this one. Also, I like how realistic his portrayals are. Thompson has a deft psychological touch.
  
  The story was about a young man who may have raped and killed a sexually interested girl on account of sexual hangups imparted by his culture, a culture that makes out his colored eyewitnesses to be unreliable and its judicial/lawyer proceedings to be about inevitable, and, well, approximately criminal.
  
  One thing people often comment upon with respect to crime fiction is the capture of vernacular, Thompson's extreme depiction of vernacular towards the end is surprising in that so much non-standard spelling didn't kick me out of the story, but did exactly what it is supposed to: drew the reader deeper into the story.
  
  The plot and pacing were good for me, and so was the feeling that once more we are going over the disturbing underbelly of the parts of many of us that we prefer not to acknowledge.
• 
  Lydie Blaizot

  J'avais découvert Jim Thompson avec son adaptation de L'homme de fer, puis 1275 âmes qui, déjà, était un roman à part. Je voulais donc poursuivre mon exploration de son œuvre et ma moitié m'a prêté Les alcooliques. J'ai décroché dès le troisième chapitre, tant le début et un délire prompt à vous dégoûter de le lire. Je me suis rabattue sur Le criminel (1953), et j'avoue que c'est une découverte très intéressante, surtout du point de vue de la construction narrative.
  
  La suite sur mon blog :
  
  https://lauryn-books.blogspot.com/202...
• 
  Sarah

  This was a unique idea, but I was really turned off by Thompson's depictions of women. the women in this book where caricatures molded from the most extreme stereotypes. They were not believable at all. I know it was written in the 1950s and that has to be taken into account, but I was offended and disappointed by the way they were portrayed. Also, I didn't like the fact that we never really find out anything. Was he guilty? Was he convicted? The story never tells us.
• 
  Christopher

  This could almost be called a satire of a crime novel rather than a crime novel itself. Thompson portrays how a rape and murder becomes something that everybody has to get an angle on, and writes the book revolving in the first person through a number of characters points of view. Parts of it are brilliant, but it is very slight and very short.
• 
  Tj

  liked the idea of a bunch of different first person perspectives of a murder. But the execution was lacking. Too many characters strayed from the main narrative thrust. exists better as a workshop idea
• 
  Freddie Sykes

  I know it's strictly off the cob, but nothing to see here -- Newsmen are liars.
• 
  Marco

  Is Bob Talbert Guilty or Innocent? Does it matter? For who and why? A deep dive into small-town American's "crime and punishment".
• 
  Jim

  Interesting story...each chapter is written from a different characters point of view.
• 
  Mark Stattelman

  Very taut/tightly written story. Character driven. Not so much about the murder itself. More about various powers/entities interests after the fact.
• 
  David Way

  Frustrating because seems like a great book and story but nothing is resolved. Also too many little plot lines for so short a book
• 
  Julie

  Started off strong - Thompson excels at portraying bitter, unsuccessful, middle-aged white guys. I also like how different characters narrated different chapters. They all had unique voices. Where is falls apart is the actual plot/crime/story. It seemed like an afterthought to Thompson. He doesn't resolve it. The book instead just fades away.
  
  And, of course, his perspective on women is all kinds of messed up. A 14 year old large breasted nymphomaniac? Sigh.
• 
  Dave

  "The Criminal" is a terrific piece of literature that is an entire departure from the norm of Jim Thompson"s work. The story is not centered around the ravings of some twisted, one-legged psychopath. Rather, it is told from more than half a dozen points of view, a writing technique that is not uncommon, but rarely done as well as here. What's really great about this book is how deftly Thompson speaks with people's voices. You can really believe you are hearing these people narrate as they talk about the mundane and go off on meaningless tangents. Plotwise, it is a story about a small town, about seemingly friendly neighbors, about juvenile delinquency, about young teenagers, about a seductive young teenager, about jumping to conclusions, about the corruption of the news business, and the empty promises of Justice.