Jim Thompson may be the best thing ever to come out of Oklahoma. Thompson was raging alcoholic who died broke and wrote crime novels, several of which feature protagonists who appear affable and slow-witted, while beneath the surface they prove to be both psychotic and cleverer than they seem. After Dark, My Sweet has one of those in William Collins, an ex-prizefighter who's been in and out of mental institutions. He's broke and stranded when he's picked up by an alcoholic widow named Fay Anderson. When he shacks up with Fay he finds himself embroiled in a kidnapping plot that goes bad, as plots always do in hard-boiled novels.
This novel is much less violent than the other Thompson novels I've read. William Collins' mental state may have a lot to do with the plot, but he's not half as crazy as Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me or Nick Corey in Pop. 1280. Collins doesn't even beat anyone up, much less kill anyone. After Dark, My Sweet is really a warped love story about the relationship that develops between Collins and Fay over the few days they know each other.
The plot never really pays off like you feel it should. You keep waiting for Collins to snap, because we're told time and again that he'll snap if he's pushed too far, but it never comes. The book clocks in at only 133 pages, and the whole thing seems rushed.
Not up to Thompson's other work. Still worth reading if you like hard-boiled noir fiction.