The Serial killer, Policing and Medical Discourses in Jim Thompson’s Crime Fiction
Author:
Maysaa Husam Jaber
Ph.D. in English Literature, Scientific Research Commission, Baghdad, Iraq
doi.org/10.52132/Ajrsp.e.2026.85.2
This paper aims to examine the psychological profile of the serial killer in Jim Thompson’s crime fiction in relation to policing and criminological approaches to crime in Cold War America, on the one hand, and the medical discourses on serial murder, on the other. By examining the representation of the serial killer in Thompson’s 1964 novel, Pop. 1280, this paper explores the interplay between the sociocultural critique of criminality and policing that Thompson’s crime narrative delivers and the portrayal of the pathology of the serial killer. It is argued here that Thompson’s novel, via the dramatization of a small-town policeman serial killer, showcases the shift in criminological discourses on crime and serial murder and the sociocultural anxieties during the Cold war in America, and at the same time subverts and challenges the genre conventions, hence carving a new lane for the serial killer narrative in the crime fiction genre. This paper will thus highlight how Thompson presents a case study of serial murder as a new subgenre of hardboiled crime fiction, and how the multilayered and complicated discourses on crime and policing in American culture at that time are connected to the serial killer narrative and the pathology of the criminal as key ingredients of American crime fiction of the Cold War era.
Keywords:
Jim Thompson, the serial killer, hardboiled crime fiction, policing, the Cold War
Academic Journal of Research and Scientific Publishing
