Paperback À The Grifters PDF à See this thread for information James Myers Thompson was a United States writer of novels short stories and screenplays largely in the hardboiled style of crime fictionThompson wrote 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 fictionThompson'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 surrealismThe writer RV 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 itThompson 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