A Swell-looking Babe

Jim Thompson

Vintage Books, 1991 - Detective and mystery stories - 145 pages

The Manton looks like a respectable hotel. Dusty Rhodes looks like a selfless young man working as a bellhop. And the woman in 1004 looks like an angel. But sometimes looks can kill, as Jim Thompson demonstrates in this vision of the crime novel as gothic.

About the author

(1906 - 1977) James Meyers 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 wrote two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films “The Killing” and “Paths of Glory”). An outstanding crime writer, the world of his fiction is rife with violence and corruption. In examining the underbelly of human experience and American society in particular, Thompson’s work at its best is both philosophical and experimental. 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).

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Swell-looking Babe; Vintage crime; Vintage crime/Black Lizard
• Author: Jim Thompson
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Vintage Books, 1991
• ISBN: 0679733116, 9780679733119
• Length: 145 pages