The Paperboy [Paperback]

Pete Dexter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1996

The sun was rising over Moat County, Florida, when Sheriff Thurmond Call was found on the highway, gutted like an alligator.  A local redneck was tried, sentenced, and set to fry.

Then Ward James, hotshot investigative reporter for the Miami Times, returns to his rural hometown with a death row femme fatale who promises him the story of the decade.  She's armed with explosive evidence, aiming to free--and meet--her convicted "fiancÚ."

With Ward's disillusioned younger brother Jack as their driver, they barrel down Florida's back roads and seamy places in search of The Story, racing flat out into a shocking head-on collision between character and fate as truth takes a back seat to headline news...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Moat County, Fla., is located where the St. John's River flows north-a geographical rarity and, in literature, a signal that we've entered the strange and violent world of National Book Award-winner Dexter (Paris Trout). Narrator Jack James is the son of the Moat County Tribune's editor and publisher. While Jack's older brother, Ward, reports for the Miami Times, Jack has settled for a job delivering papers for the Tribune. But when Ward and his partner, evil dandy Yardley Acheman, come to Moat County to investigate the four-year-old murder of the local sheriff, Jack assists them in the inquiry. After a vicious beating by two sailors lands Ward in the intensive care unit, Yardley finishes the story without Ward and Jack, fabricating evidence to do so. Accompanying his traumatized brother Ward back to Miami, Jack takes a job as a copyboy at the Times. It isn't long, however, before Yardley's wrongdoing comes to light, generating more trouble for the Jameses. Dexter's writing is rock-solid, he offers acute observations about the nature of reporting and his grip on the Southern male psyche is unquestionable. The powerful thematic drive of Paris Trout is missing here, however, and the story line is so complicated that it loses focus and then almost peters out. But if this isn't Dexter's best, it's still a provocative offering from one of the most exciting novelists around. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

W.W. ("World War") James is editor of the Moat County (Florida) Tribune and the father of two boys. Ward, the elder, is a reporter for the Miami Times. Jack is a college dropout who delivers papers for his father. With his reporting partner Yardley Acheman, Ward returns to Moat County to investigate the murder of the sheriff and the subsequent trial of Hillary Van Wetter, who was imprisoned for the murder. The investigation calls Van Wetter's guilt into question, and he is freed from death row. But at what price? Dexter (Brotherly Love, LJ 10/1/91) is a taut storyteller who keeps the pages turning. Though he offers a cast of characters recalling the best of Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard, his chillingly satisfactory new work should not be relegated to the ranks of genre writing. Highly recommended.
--David Dodd, Univ. of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Delta (January 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385315724
• ISBN-13: 978-0385315722
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,924 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There's not a bad book in Pete Dexter's lot, March 18, 2000

By 

Karlis Streips (Riga, Latvia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Paperboy (Paperback)

I read "Paris Trout" (which I picked up wondering what the City of Light and fish have to do with one another) and was hooked. Pete Dexter writes books about people you don't really want to know -- racists, violent men, drunks, people who are depressed to the point of dragging you down with them -- but he gets his hooks in you on page one and never lets go. "Paperboy" is basically about failure and how close we are to it even when it seems that life is going OK -- something can come into our lives that takes it all apart. The story is magnificently told in prose so tight that you can almost hear typewriter keys clicking away (Pete Dexter's books don't read like they were produced on a word processor). Best of all, there are the many places in the book where the words "as if" or "like" appear. Nobody does descriptive comparisons better. This is a great book, just like the other Pete Dexter books -- you just can't go wrong with him.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please -- we need a new Dexter book!, January 6, 2000

By 

M. Prufer (Myrtle Beach, SC USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Paperboy (Paperback)

Pete Dexter is one of the most overlooked writers around. His style is beautifully lyrical, insightful with great characterization. Granted, his stories are dark examples of the human condition but well worth the journey. If you want a fast-moving plot, a pretty story or happy endings, you won't find them here. What you will find is some of the best writing you will ever read. I must admit to a bias here because Pete and I worked together in the '70s at a couple of newspapers so I consider him a friend. But I'm also a book editor and reviewer and read a lot, and I've read all Pete's books and consider this one of the best. Now, if he'll quit writing movie scripts ("Rush" and "Michael" to name a couple)long enough to write another fine novel, we'd all be happy!

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a bad read, July 24, 2001

By 

Adam Griffith (Bothell, Washington USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Paperboy (Paperback)

I enjoyed reading this book, and I've decided that being an enjoyable read is worth 3 stars. There were a couple of things that bothered me about it though.

It starts off as sort of a murder mystery, with a group of reporters investigating the murder of a sheriff in a sparsely populated county. The narrator is the brother of the reporter who heads the investigation. The plot eventually moves away from this theme, and becomes sort of jammed between a character study of the narrator and his brother, an indictment of media morality, and some sort of Greek-style tragedy. The overall effect is that the book wanders a bit, and doesn't seem to be able to decide what it's trying to do. It almost seemed like whenever the book got perilously close to making a statement, it backed off and went in a different direction. This is something of a pet peeve of mine, as I think sometimes writers do this kind of thing to seem mysterious and profound, under the assumption that being understandable means being simple and shallow.

Other than that, the book was well written and for the most part the characters were interesting, although most of them were not very likable. I think the book would have been better if the narrator's brother Ward, who was perhaps the central figure of the book, had a detectable personality instead of just acting like a journalistic robot. The book was saved by the narrator, whom it was possible to sympathize with, and even like.

Overall I would mildly recommend it, but don't feel like it is a must read.