Paris Trout

Published in 1988 by Random House, Paris Trout is “a gothic tale of murder, injustice, and mayhem” (Kirkus Review) by author Pete Dexter. The novel takes place at the end of World War II, and centers on a racist yet respected man named Paris Trout. Trout owns a hardware store in small-town Georgia, but he’s also a ruthless loan shark who preys on struggling black families. When he attempts to collect a debt one day, he ends up killing a black girl and severely injuring a black woman, two acts of violence that set-up the ensuing trial and, later, bloodshed, which will envelop the Southern town. Paris Trout addresses themes of racism, injustice, class struggle, mental health, morality, murder, and despair.

Paris Trout owns a general store, as well as other property, in the small town of Cotton Point, Georgia. Though Trout is a central part of the community, he’s a violent and abusive man. In the years following WWII, Trout  has expanded his business to include preying economically on disadvantaged blacks by operating as a loan shark out of his store’s back room. The tension in the narrative reaches its first boiling point when Trout and an accomplice murder Rosie Sayers, a young black girl, and seriously injure a black woman in a shooting spree, while attempting to collect a debt from a young man. When Trout is apprehended, a trial is set that will dramatically—and violently—change the small town.

Other characters that interact with Trout and set the tone for the narrative include Trout’s wife, Hannah, who is abused by her husband and psychologically damaged as a result of his strong hold over her; Harry Seagraves, a lawyer who is shocked at the trial; and Carl Bonner, a young lawyer who vacillates between his youth spent in Cotton Point and his newly acquired status as an outsider. These characters all come face-to-face with dark truths over the course of their narratives, but these truths can do nothing in the face of what Trout, after being convicted, considers his ultimate truth.



Though Trout is indeed found guilty and sentenced to jail, he manages to both bribe and blackmail his way out of his punishment. Having secured his freedom, he returns to Cotton Point. His return makes the town uneasy, especially as his actions weigh on their collective conscience, but Trout continues living out his days with the conviction that he’s done nothing wrong (killing a black person isn’t wrong in his view) until, one day, his grasp on reality deteriorates. Disheveled and mad, he imagines that his wife is poisoning him. As a result, he hides in the county courthouse during a sesquicentennial celebration and begins killing people. His first victim, before the courthouse, was his stroke-ridden mother (she’s symbolic of him severing all ties to his past). He then shoots the rest of his “enemies,” which include his lawyer (Harry Seagraves), and his wife’s divorce lawyer, as well as many other prominent figures.

Paris Trout highlights how racism can infect a person like a disease; in fact, the narrative underscores the fact that racism itself is a disease akin to madness. Though people like Trout believe they can function in society with their self-contained racism, this madness spills out and corrodes the environment around it. Trout’s murder of a young black girl, and then the murders that he later commits at the courthouse, show that madness and violence spill out and affect whatever it comes into contact with.

Pete Dexter is a highly-praised author of several novels, including Paris Trout, Deadwood and God’s Pocket. Paris Trout won the National Book Award for Fiction, and has also been adapted into a film.