The Nothing Man

SUMMARY: "If Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich could have joined together in some ungodly union and produced a literary offspring, Jim Thompson would be it. " --Washington Post Clinton Brown is smart, good-looking, and the best rewrite man on the Pacific City Courier. The wife he divorced is still in love with him, as is the alluring and well-heeled widow who will do anything to make him happy. But Brown is missing something, and without that one thing there's no possibility of happiness--no possibility of anything but knocking back the booze and punishing anyone foolish enough to try to take away his loneliness. What Clinton Brown lacks may be enough to make him murder.Is Brown a killer or the victim of a sadistic frame-up? And if he's innocent, why is he so intent on being caught? Deviously plotted, fearfully acquainted with the psychology of rage and guilt, The Nothing Man is further proof of Jim Thompson's mastery of the crime genre.

"If Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich could have joined together in some ungodly union and produced a literary offspring, Jim Thompson would be it. " —Washington Post

Clinton Brown is smart, good-looking, and the best rewrite man on the Pacific City Courier. The wife he divorced is still in love with him, as is the alluring and well-heeled widow who will do anything to make him happy. But Brown is missing something, and without that one thing there's no possibility of happiness—no possibility of anything but knocking back the booze and punishing anyone foolish enough to try to take away his loneliness. What Clinton Brown lacks may be enough to make him murder.

Is Brown a killer or the victim of a sadistic frame-up? And if he's innocent, why is he so intent on being caught? Deviously plotted, fearfully acquainted with the psychology of rage and guilt, The Nothing Man is further proof of Jim Thompson's mastery of the crime genre.

Library Journal

Published in 1953 and 1954, respectively, this duo by Thompson offer an autobiographical novel of a tough kid's violent ascent into adulthood and a man's loss of his self-esteem that turns him pretty nasty. Two gritty novels by a master of the crime genre that are must haves for all mystery collections.

Rage and guilt has either driven alcoholic newspaperman Clinton Brown to commit murder, or it has made him the victim of a sadistic frame-up