The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

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).

Breece D’J Pancake was born in West Virginia in 1952. He attended Marshall University, taught English at Virginia military schools, and then entered the creative writing program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he died in 1979. During his lifetime, his short fiction was published primarily in The Atlantic.