Jim Thompson

James Myers "Jim" Thompson (1906-1977) was an American crime novelist and screenwriter, born in Anadarko, Oklahoma. He worked as a bellboy, oilfield laborer and newspaper reporter before publishing his first novels in the 1940s, and in the early 1950s wrote a run of paperback originals including The Killer Inside Me (1952) and Savage Night (1953).

He co-wrote the screenplays for Stanley Kubrick's The Killing and Paths of Glory. Little recognized in his lifetime, he was widely rediscovered after his death, when many of his novels, among them After Dark, My Sweet and The Grifters, were reissued. He died in Los Angeles.