After his breakthrough fourth novel, The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson's fifth, Cropper's Cabin, feels like a variation on the proverbial sophomore slump. The novel's narrator, nineteen-year-old Tommy Carver, is poised to rise above his origins as a sharecropper's son: He's getting an education, and he's the secret beau of Donna Ontime, daughter of his father's wealthy landlord. Then, of course, things turn noirish, but the narrative never gains much momentum. On the whole, Cropper's Cabin is not a bad book, but there's certainly no harm in skipping it. Grade: C
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