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Phillip Thompson

A native of rural east Mississippi, Phillip Thompson served in combat as a Marine, covered capital murder cases as a journalist, and wrote speeches for top military leaders in the Pentagon. He has worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Mississippi and Virginia, and his journalistic work has been featured in newspapers across the Deep South and the East Coast.

Publishers Weekly described his first novel, Enemy Within, ” … as timely as the morning headlines [and] asks some probing questions about national apathy, the abdication of responsibility for one’s own country and the resulting decay of U.S. civil rights.” Thompson’s other novels include A Simple Murder and Deep Blood. His short fiction has appeared in O-Dark-Thirty; The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature; Out of the Gutter Online; Thrills, Kills ‘N’ Chaos; Near to the Knuckle; Yellow Mama and The Shamus Sampler II.

He also authored the non-fiction account of his Gulf War combat experience Into the Storm: A U.S. Marine in the Persian Gulf War. He lives in Virginia. Find him on Twitter at @olemissgrad38 and online at his blog, “Grace & Violence,” at http://kudzucorner.wordpress.com.

Books by Phillip Thompson

Not Dead Enough

The third Sheriff Colt Harper adventure.

Harper believes that combat veterans share a lifetime bond of loyalty with their fellow Marines. But when his service buddy Robert “Flip” Wilson, who slid into an oblivion of drugs and crime after returning from the Gulf War, shows up in his county and kills a man, Harper's loyalty to his friend smashes into his duty to the law. The two men find themselves on opposite sides now, fighting a different kind of war, where the battlefields are their hearts and souls…and losing will cost them everything.

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Old Anger

Sheriff Colt Harper's investigation of a black man's murder ignites long-buried bitterness over systemic racism in his county and forces him to confront his own demons...and white supremacists intent on sparking a race war.

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Outside the Law - Audiobook

The audiobook edition of Phillip Thompson's novel, read by J. Rodney Turner

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Old Anger By Phillip Thompson

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Reviews For Phillip Thompson

WRITING OLD ANGER: The Heart of the Matter in a Southern Crime Story 5.0

Phillip Thompson explores Larry Brown’s rough south, digging deeper and seeking a truce with the interloping outside world, and Harper’s tormented inner world as well. Thompson writes about the tendency of a good man toward violence. The need to seek redemption for the sins of the past—even if that redemption is through more violence. Maybe especially. Outside the Law is my kind of book, and Phillip Thompson’s Mississippi is a rough south indeed. One I hope he’ll revisit.

Grant Jerkins, author of A VERY SIMPLE CRIME

WRITING OLD ANGER: The Heart of the Matter in a Southern Crime Story 5.0

Thompson creates a noir-hard, meaty but grit-filled plot, coats it with a dark humor batter, then southern fries it.

Jim Sanderson, author of EL CAMINO DEL RIO