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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The Paperboy by Pete Dexter 307 pages



The sheriff of Moat County in northern Florida is brutally murdered and Hillary Van Wetter is tried and found guilty of the crime and is in jail awaiting execution. Charlotte Bless studies the trial and decides there were mistakes made by Van Wetter’s attorney and enlists the help of two young newspapermen, Ward James and Yardley Acheman, to investigate and uncover the truth.  In addition Charlotte has been corresponding by letter with Van Wetter and has decided she is in love with him.

The descriptions of Van Wetter are of a loathsome and chilling individual, but an intelligent one.

The story is mostly told by Ward’s younger brother, Jack, and is full of menace and violence and tension.  The Van Wetter clan is a large one and the encounters the three young men have with the members of the family are fraught with conditions of poverty and desperation and fear.


This is a very well written book and will not be one I forget for a long time.

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