Paris Trout by Pete Dexter

It was only by happenstance that I read this National Book Award-winning novel the same week that Dylann Roof killed nine black worshipers in a South Carolina church. Though Paris Trout was written in 1988 and the plot is set in the late 1940's, many of the symptoms of racial bigotry portrayed in the novel are obviously still present in 2015 America.

The story goes like this -- Paris Trout is a white businessman in Georgia, one of his enterprises being lending money at high interest and selling shoddy cars to poor black people. When one of his borrowers refuses to pay because of a dispute over the "insurance," Trout and a colleague descend on the man's house to collect. Although the borrower is not home, Trout shoots and kills a 14-year-old black girl as she tries to escape his wrath.

All this happens at the beginning of the novel; the rest concerns the aftermath of the killing and the reactions of the townspeople. Some overtly display their bigotry by applauding Trout's actions; some suggest approval by manufacturing excuses for him (he was surely just defending himself); most just covertly sympathize by ignoring the fact that he is never punished for his crime. As Trout becomes more and more paranoid and deranged, all continue to look the other way, until he finally explodes with more violence.

Eerily, Trout never believes he has done anything wrong, proclaiming that he was just a businessman collecting a lawful debt and that different rules apply when dealing with black people. Evidently Dylann Roof didn't believe that he had done wrong either, because he left some alive so they could tell of his deed.

The messages and cautions in this book make it as important to read today as when it was published. It is also a page-turner of the first degree. Dexter is not a literary stylist, and, frankly, his prose is too simplistic to be interesting in itself, but the rest makes up for it.