A Jim Thompson novel is the literary equivalent to a Robert Williams painting: outrageous, surrealistic, obscene, but above all hysterically funny. King Blood is all of those and even more. An absolutely irrepressible stream of barnyard obscenity, it didn’t reach publication until twenty years after its writing and was first published in Great Britain, like the equally outrageous Naked Lunch.King Blood is a filthy, twisted western about two brothers trying to screw each other over a stolen fortune, the escapades reaching a grotesquely nightmarish Yosemite Sam cartoon. In fact, the novel deals heavily in pairs: two brothers, two prostitute sisters who kill their tricks, two patriarchs: a half-Indian and a full-blooded Indian, and of course two hot-blooded horny squaws straight out of Nugget/Rogue Magazine. As an added bonus, Mr. Thompson even throws in his father as an authoritative character, Marshall James Thompson. King Blood has an insane stream of consciousness narrative that maintains a fresh flavor through this psychotic vaudeville western comedy, and is never, ever boring. One of his best.
