The major social concern in The Criminal remains the definition of criminal activity. Thompson looks at the ethics, or lack of ethics, in the American justice system as he examines the effects of popular opinion upon legal verdicts. He uses questions of justice to examine the shaping of popular opinion through the media, especially through newspaper journalism. The basic plot line of a teen-ager, Bobby, accused of raping and murdering his female teen-age neighbor, frames the broad questions of the concurrent respect for, and disregard of, ethics in the shaping of social consciousness.

Like many of Thompson's protagonists, Bobby Talbert is handed his destiny from an uncaring world. The novel becomes, according to one critic, "a study of collective guilt."

A journalist himself, Thompson seems fascinated by the cold removal from everyday life of journalists and newspaper owners who view the stories they tell as instruments...