Pop 1280 by Jim Thompson

 

You can buy Pop 1280...Here

You can find out more about Jim Thompson...Here

• The Blurb...

Nick Corey likes being the high sheriff of Potts County. But Nick has a few problems that he needs to deal with: like his loveless marriage, the pimps who torment him, the honest man who is running against him in the upcoming elections and the women who adore him.

And it turns out that Nick isn't anything like as amiable, easy-going or as slow as he seems. He's as sly, brutal and corrupt as they come.

• Our Review...

I decided to read this book after seeing Charlie Higson (of The Fast Show) recommend it on the BBC book show "Between The Covers"

I believe this tale is set in the southern states of the USA prior to WW1

What a character Nick Corey, our protagonist is. To the world he is a bumbling, verbose possibly mentally, slow well meaning good old southern boy. Nick Corey is the small town sheriff. He keeps getting elected because he isn't offensive or confrontational and works hard to keep it so. 

But Nick is different on the inside. He is a cunning and ruthless sociopath. He manipulates others around to solve his (mostly women) problems. Oh and he is violent.

He is Forrest Gump on the outside but Niccolò Machiavelli on the inside.

The other characters are well developed also from Myra his harriden of a wife and her Hung like a horse halfwit brother, to Rose, Nick's potty mouthed married lover amongst others.

Nick's plotting is inventive. Each victim deserving their fate, at least in Nick's eyes. He often plays one problem off against another to find an elegant, if horrific solution. Each victim greedily heading towards disaster because of their misguided, base desires. Some passages make you reflect on human nature and how we treat our family, friends and neighbours.

All this plotting and killing and duplicity takes its toll on Nick's mental and he starts to view himself and his actions in a different light. 

If you can handle Nick's round the houses, Dukes of Hazzard type internal monologues this is a very good book. Great main character, well developed minor chatacters, great plotting.  

 

• Selected Quotes...

"About all a fella would be able to do, without getting arrested, was to drink sody- pop and maybe kiss his wife. And no one liked the idea very much, the wives included."

"I’d been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever’s got tail at one end has teeth at the other,"

"I loved was myself, and I was willing to do anything I god- dang had to to go on lying and cheating and drinking whiskey and screwing women and going to church on Sunday with all the other respectable people."

"And I don’t suppose you’re at all responsible, are you?’ ‘Not a speck,’ I said. ‘Just because I put temptation in front of people, it don’t mean they got to pick it up.’"

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

Sins of The Father by Lawrence Block

They Shoot Horses Don't They? by Horace McCoy

The Black Dhalia by James Ellroy

• About The Author...

Jim Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma. He began writing fiction at a very young age, selling his first story to True Detective when he was only fourteen. Thompson eventually wrote twenty-nine novels, all but three of which were published as paperback originals. Thompson also co-wrote two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory). Several of his novels have been filmed by American and French directors, resulting in classic noir including The Killer Inside Me (1952), After Dark My Sweet(1955), and The Grifters (1963).