Jim Thompson has 8 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 8 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 12 ratings. The most-rated is The Killer Inside Me.
The Killer Inside Me
Summary
Everyone in the small town of Central City, Texas, loves Lou Ford. A deputy sheriff, Lou's known to the small-time criminals, the real-estate entrepreneurs, and all of his coworkers - the low-lifes, the big-timers, and everyone in-between - as the nicest guy around. He may not be the brightest or the most interesting man in town, but nevertheless, he's the kind of officer you're happy to have keeping your streets safe. The sort of man you might even wish your daughter would end up with someday. But behind the platitudes and glad-handing lurks a monster the likes of which few have ever seen. An urge that has already claimed multiple lives, and cost Lou his brother Mike, a self-sacrificing construction worker who fell to his death on the job in what was anything but an accident. It's a murder that Lou is determined to avenge - and if innocent people have to die in the process, well, that's perfectly all right with him. In The Killer Inside Me, Thompson goes where few novelists have dared to go, giving us a pitch-black glimpse into the mind of the American Serial Killer years before Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, in the novel that will forever be known as the master performance of one of the greatest crime novelists of all time.
©1952 Jim Thompson (P)2011 Hachette
After Dark, My Sweet
Summary
William "Kid" Collins was once a respected boxer. Now he's a drifter, on the run after escaping from a mental institution. One afternoon he meets Fay, a beautiful young widow. She is smart and decent - at least when she's sober. Soon Collins finds himself involved in a kidnapping scheme that goes drastically wrong almost before it even begins. Because the kid they've picked up isn't like other kids: he's diabetic and without insulin, he'll die. Not the safest situation for Collins, a man for whom stress and violence have long gone hand-in-hand. After Dark, My Sweet once again displays Jim Thompson as the undisputed master of American noir. The basis of James Foley's critically acclaimed film of the same name, with the sweep of an epic tragedy, Thompson's classic limns the dangerous territory of honest people all-too-easily sucked into wickedness, with no way out but down.
©2011 Jim Thompson (P)2011 Hachette
Pop. 1280
Summary
Nick Corey is a terrible sheriff on purpose. He doesn't solve problems, enforce rules or arrest criminals. He knows that nobody in tiny Potts County actually wants to follow the law and he is perfectly content lazing about, eating five meals a day, and sleeping with all the eligible women. Still, Nick has some very complex problems to deal with. Two local pimps have been sassing him, ruining his already tattered reputation. His girlfriend Rose is being terrorized by her husband. And then, there's his wife and her brother Lenny who won't stop troubling Nick's already stressed mind. Are they a little too close for a brother and a sister? With an election coming up, Nick needs to fix his problems and fast. Because the one thing Nick does know is that he will do anything to stay sheriff. Because, as it turns out, Sheriff Nick Corey is not nearly as dumb as he seems. In Pop. 1280, widely regarded as a classic of mid-20th century crime, Thompson offers up one of his best, in a tale of lust, murder, and betrayal in the Deep South that was the basis for the critically acclaimed French film Coup de Torchon.
©2011 Jim Thompson (P)2011 Hachette Audio
Nothing More than Murder
Summary
Joe Wilmot can't stand his wife, Elizabeth. But he sure loves her movie theater. It's a modest establishment in a beat-down town - but Joe has the run of the place, and inside its walls, he's king. Without the theater, he'd be sunk. Without his leadership, the theater would close in a heartbeat. If it isn't the life Joe imagined for himself, at the very least, it's livable. Everything changes when Joe falls for the housemaid, Carol, and the two can't keep it a secret from Elizabeth. Elizabeth won't leave Joe the theater unless he provides for her... but he's put all his money into the show house. Carol's and Joe's only hope is the life insurance policies they've taken out on each other. If one of them were to be presumed dead, they'd have more than enough money to solve all their problems.... No one knows murder better than Jim Thompson, and in this incisive foray into the dark dealings of the mid-20th century movie industry, he doesn't disappoint. This is the riveting story of a love triangle gone horribly wrong - and just how far one man will go to hold on to a desperate dream.
©1949 Jim Thompson, renewed 1985 (P)2011 Hachette Audio
The Kill-Off
Summary
Luane Devore's days are numbered. All her neighbors in the declining seaside resort town of Manduwoc want her dead. Some, like her young husband, Ralph, and his girlfriend, Danny, want the thousands of dollars she keeps hidden under the mattress she spends her days resting on. Others want her to stop her malicious gossip - some of which could ruin lives. Told from multiple perspectives, The Kill-Off tells the story of a woman not long for this earth - but who will finally take matters into their own hands... but when? The Kill-Off was the basis of Maggie Greenwald's critically acclaimed film of the same name.
©1957 Jim Thompson, copyright © renewed 1985 by Alberta H. Thompson (P)2011 Hachette Audio
The Rip-Off
Summary
Britton Rainstar never knew he could love a woman as deeply as he does Manuela Aloe and be so terrified of her at the same time. It's not just that he thinks she's out of his league. It's more that the longer he stays with her, the closer to death he seems to come. A vicious dog is somehow let loose in his hotel room. He's threatened at gunpoint by a man in a skeleton costume. And when he finally ends up in the hospital, someone pushes his wheelchair down the stairs. Nothing anything like this has ever happened to Britt before - and while Manuela's never around when the so-called "accidents" happen, neither can Britt prove she's behind the many threats on his life. Is a rival for Manuela's affections trying to chase him away? Is there more to Manuela herself than meets the eye? Whatever it is, Britt better find out fast - before whoever's after him hits their mark, and the man who never thought he'd land the ultimate girl ends up paying the ultimate price.
©1989 Jim Thompson (P)2012 Hachette
The Getaway
Summary
Doc McCoy is the most skilled criminal alive. But when, for the first time in Doc's long criminal career, his shot doesn't hit the mark, everything begins to fall apart. And Doc begins to realize that the perfect bank robbery isn't complete without the perfect getaway to back it up. The Getaway is the classic story of a bank robbery gone horribly wrong, where the smallest mistakes have catastrophic consequences, and shifting loyalties lead to betrayals and chaos. The basis for the classic Steve McQueen film of the same name, as well as a 1994 remake with Alec Baldwin, Thompson's novel set the bar for every heist story that followed - but as Thompson continues to prove time and again, nobody's ever done it better than the master.
©1958 Jim Thompson, copyright © renewed 1986 by Alberta H. Thompson (P)2011 Hachette Audio
A Hell of a Woman
Summary
Frank "Dolly" Dillon has a job he hates, working sales and collections for Pay-E-Zee Stores; a wife named Joyce he can't stand; and an account balance that barely allows him to pay the bills each month. Working door-to-door one day, trying to eke money out of folk with even less of it than he has, Dolly crosses paths with a beautiful young woman named Mona Farrell. Mona's being forced by her aunt to do things she doesn't like, with men she doesn't know - she wants out, any way she can get it. And to a man who wants nothing of what he has, Mona sure looks like something he actually does. Soon Dolly and Mona find themselves involved in a scheme of robbery, murder, and mayhem that makes Dolly's blood run cold. And as Dolly's plans begin to unravel, his mind soon follows. In A Hell of a Woman, Jim Thompson offers another arresting portrait of a deviant mind, in an ambitious crime novel that ranks among his best work.
©2012 Jim Thompson (P)2012 Hachette