Peter Dexter’s third novel will make some readers who haven’t read his first two want to look them up (“God’s Pocket,” “Deadwood”), but other readers will find its ugliness and darkness not to their ...

Paris Trout is a vile Southern bigot. He owns a store and is a loanshark. He often sues people, and so his lawyer, Harry Seagraves, eventually meets Paris' wife Hannah. A former schoolteacher, she ...

Pete Dexter’s Paris Trout is no fish story. It’s a spare, credible, powerful novel about life and death in a small Southern town, just after World War II. The town is Cotton Point, in Ether County, Ga ...

Pete Dexter’s “Paris Trout,” the 1988 National Book Award winner, was a challenging novel. The story of a southern bigot’s descent into murderous paranoia, it was brutally told, murky of theme and ...