Ward James is a reclusive, obsessed young reporter, half of a famous investigative team in Miami, the son of a newspaper family.
His younger brother, Jack, recently expelled from the University of Florida's swimming team, and then from the university itself, drives a delivery truck for their father's paper in northern Florida.
The brothers are brought together when Ward returns home to investigate the case of a man awaiting execution for the revenge killing of the county's legendary sheriff. Ward is accompanied by his opportunistic partner, Yardley Acheman, and Charlotte Bless, an inordinately sexual and determined woman who has fallen in love through the mail with the sheriff's murderer.
What is uncovered in the months that follow, in the exploration -- and then exploitation -- of the murder of Sheriff Thurmond Call, goes beyond the crime itself to the heart of the characters, and to the heart of the business of journalism.
Terrifying and graphically precise, The Paperboy is National Book Award winner Pete Dexter's most shocking -- and perhaps, at the same time, most accessible -- story to date.
The sun was rising over Moat County, Florida, when Sheriff Thurmond Call wasfound 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 himthe story of the decade. She's armed with explosive evidence, aiming tofree--and meet--her convicted "fiancé."
With Ward's disillusioned younger brother Jack as their driver, theybarrel 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 astruth takes a back seat to headline news...
Copyright © 1996 by Pete Dexter
