'Paris Trout' is a white storekeeper and moneylender in the sleepy little town of Cotton Point, Georgia. He is also an implacable bigot. A long time ago he studied law, but he is no respecter of it. One hot summer’s day he invokes his own law, with devastating results.

Some of the townspeople think Paris Trout a hero for what he did: others that the law should make him pay.

‘A grim and fascinating novel filled with wonderfully comic touches, by a writer whose brilliant understanding of the Deep South has allowed him to capture much of its essence – its bitter class distinctions, its violence, its strangeness… A fine and engrossing work’
WILLIAM STYRON

‘Reaches out and grabs the reader by the throat’
KATE SAUNDERS, 'Sunday Times'

‘Written with a quiet, almost forensic calm, full of foreboding detail, subtly registered, and with few of the baroque set-pieces normally associated with ‘Southern’ literature’
BRIAN MORTON, 'The Times'

NOW A FILM STARING DENNIS HOPPER AND BARBARA HERSHEY