Who is Thompson's most convincing (anti)hero?

I just read "After Dark, My Sweet" and found the protagonist, "Kid" Colley or "Collie" which Faye nicknames him for his "muzzle" (-:) intriguing. The way Patric plays him is a homage to Bogart as Duke Mantee in "Petrified Forest"--he walks like him, aping his ungainly, almost simian gait which is a photocopy of Mantee's in the Sherwood play and for which Leslie Howard insisted Bogart get the role when it was being casted. Only difference is the "Kid" is not a desperado on the lam like "Duke" romantically trying to link up with his lady but is similar in that Colley falls hard for Faye who is a dipso and sets himself up to be plugged by her so she can reap something out of the bolloxed kidnap of the diabetic kid. Both are failed romantics. Both a bit jejune in their ineluctable romanticism. Bogie is handy with a chopper and Colley handy with his mitts.

I have yet to read other nouvelles by Thompson but have on tap "The Alcoholics" and "The Getaway" (crummy film version with McQueen and the later one with Baldwin--the skip the Depression era roots)and would like to read the original of a French version, "Coup de Torchon, of Thompson's noire novel "Pop. 1280" if I can track it down through interlibrary loan. The important thing I liked was the mise-en-scene of Indio as the setting for the 1990 version: California 'boondocks'.