Wild Town – 1957, Corgi Books (UK) 1989. 1st printing.

Thompson wrote for the predominantly male-targeted hardboiled crime market serviced by companies like Lion Books and Popular Library. Director Stanley Kubrick was an admirer and hired Thompson to write the screenplay for his anti-war film Paths of Glory (1956), based on Humphrey Cobb’s World War I novel.

Widely recognized as the “king of the hard-boiled pulp writers” and “master of the anti-hero tough-guy genre”, Thompson’s vision was considerably darker than most of his peers, which probably explains why he never reached a wider audience, like John D. MacDonald and Elmore Leonard, who were working the same pastures at around the same time.

“The distinguishing marks of his novels are a high degree of death, a varying degree of comedy, some astonishing play with psychology, and – most important – the absence of any moral center at all…” – Newsweek

“At his best he outwrote James M. Cain at his most violent, amoral, terse and fast-moving…a classic American writer.” – Kirkus Reviews