Rating: 
Summary: Another Pete Dexter winner
Review: After reading the fantastic "Paris Trout", I felt
certain I would be disappointed by "The Paper Boy".
Not so. Pete Dexter has an uncanny way of distilling
so much into so little...the simplicity of his
narrative belies the complexity of his characters
and his observations are brutally honest.
While his stories are certainly worth telling, the
real beauty of his work is in the world he creates,
where life is fundamentally -- and familiarly --
unfair.
Rating:
Summary: Quite possibly the most well written book I've ever read
Review: and definitely an excellent story. Pete Dexter writes an incredible book and tells an equally intriguing tale...under the proper direction, this could make a movie that would sweep the oscars.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Summer Read
Review: Compeling, meaningful, rich, there just aren't enough positive adjatives in my limited vocabulary to properly describe this book.Honest American Literature. This book has all the best ingredients; a wonderful character study, sex, drama, murder, family tension. Thank you Pete Dexter.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best living writers
Review: Dexter sentences are so sharp and clean he cuts right to the essence of each character and situation. So many people talk about tight pros and crisp writing that it's a cliche, but this is the real thing. His material is violent and masculine but I think with his talent he could write about nearly anything and make it interesting. The Paper Boy shows us how hard it is to get to the truth about anything. This is a novel that will outlast Dexter himself. Highly recomended along with Paris Trout and Brotherly Love. I wish Dexter would write another novel, and I bet his next one is about Hollwood. The corruption and BS out there ought to be good grist for his mill. HB
Rating:
Summary: Human nature & the perils of journalism
Review: Don't be taken in by the jacket copy. This is not a thriller. The murder mystery is secondary to a solemn meditation on Southern culture, human nature, families, and the dangers of believing what you read -- and write -- in the newspapers. <new ¶> Jack, the Failed Younger Son of a small-town newspaper publisher, gets kicked out of college and finds himself tagging along as his brother, a socially inept but obsessively dedicated Miami reporter, and his manipulative partner investigate a murder conviction in the brothers' home town. Their work is complicated by the appearance of a blue-collar femme fatale who specializes in writing love letters to killers on death row. She spurs the reporters and Jack ever deeper into the Florida swamps and the quicksand of their own psyches. <new ¶> This is a complicated book written in a beautifully simple style. The narrator's straightforward voice never falters as his tale ranges from Southern Gothic horror to ironically accurate observations of human nature to painful personal realizations.
Rating:
Summary: KEEPS YOUR ATTENTION
Review: Florida seems a popular setting for novels these days. And so THE PAPERBOY is set in northern Florida. A sheriff has been killed and a swamp redneck put on death row for the murder. Some "paperboys" for the Miami Times investigate the conviction. What unravels as a result of the ensuing Pulitzer Prize winning story by investigative repoters Ward James and Yardley Acheman is more than a death sentence repreive and effects all involved. Lives change and relationships change. Therein lies the tale. Suffice it to say that crusading liberal journalism can be both questionable in practice and have unintended negative consequences. This is an absorbing, beautifully written novel that keeps your attention from page one. Part newspaper story, part family story, part murder mystery it falls into a category all its own. Pete Dexter employs a spare, realistic style that takes its energy from the dark side of human nature. THE PAPERBOY may be more life as it really is than life as we wish it to be but then maybe that is one definition of good literature. Recommended highly. Four and a half bylines out of five.
Rating:
Summary: KEEPS YOUR ATTENTION
Review: Florida seems a popular setting for novels these days. And so THE PAPERBOY is set in northern Florida. A sheriff has been killed and a swamp redneck put on death row for the murder. Some "paperboys" for the Miami Times investigate the conviction. What unravels as a result of the ensuing Pulitzer Prize winning story by investigative repoters Ward James and Yardley Acheman is more than a death sentence repreive and effects all involved. Lives change and relationships change. Therein lies the tale. Suffice it to say that crusading liberal journalism can be both questionable in practice and have unintended negative consequences. This is an absorbing, beautifully written novel that keeps your attention from page one. Part newspaper story, part family story, part murder mystery it falls into a category all its own. Pete Dexter employs a spare, realistic style that takes its energy from the dark side of human nature. THE PAPERBOY may be more life as it really is than life as we wish it to be but then maybe that is one definition of good literature. Recommended highly. Four and a half bylines out of five.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a bad read
Review: 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, and 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.
Rating:
Summary: Not a bad read
Review: 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, and 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Tell me again what this book was about please...
Review: I must say that the synopsis of this book was a bit misleading. I was expecting to read about some newspaper reporters investigating the murder of a backwater - town sheriff who was killed by a local swamp redneck. The story started out this way and it was really good. Kind of a cross between "Deliverance" and "Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil." About half way through it turned into a story about the reporters themselves. I was not pleased. However the writing was excellent.
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