There is a lot at the heart of Pete Dexter's new novel, but very little is written on the page. The truth of this tale lies in what doesn't get said, in the uncomfortable stillness; the ripple effect in the lies of silence as they spread from this deceptive thriller to touch more and more lives.

Ward James and Yardley Acheman are two successful reporters from Miami who arrive in backwoods Florida to investigate a murder that took place four years before. In August 1965, Thurmond Call was found on the road between Lately and Thorn, opened from stomach to groin and left for dead. At the time Thurmond Call was sheriff of Moat County, a man with a reputation where violent deaths in the local black population were concerned.

James and Acheman are convinced a man who languishes on Death Row, Hillary Van Wetter, is innocent of the crime. So too is Charlotte Bless, but Charlotte Bless has other motives for joining the crusade, most stemming from the lewd letters from other condemned prisoners in her file boxes. Ward hires his college dropout brother Jack as driver, and it's Jack who narrates this impressive novel.

All the principles have their own reasons for removing the stain from Hillary Van Wetter's character, other than Jack. He's twenty and more interested in swimming and getting laid. Acheman is the ambitious journo who sees wealth and glory in a dead man's eyes. Ward is different. Ward does the spadework, keeper of the integrity and higher moral purpose. In the end it's that very integrity that does for the brothers.

Penguin are being a little disingenuous in trailing Dexter's novel as a thriller, even down to the enthusiastic Scott Turow strapline on the cover. By about half-way the author has dexterously dismissed mystery and suspense to the character study he clearly sees the book for. So lucid and beautifully written is Dexter's prose that the reader scarcely notices the change being affected. The title could refer to any one of the James family - Ward the conscientious reporter; Jack, a slacker before most slackers were even born, delivers papers for his father; and their father himself, the 60-year-old Lately newspaper proprietor.

The book, if it is about anything, is about the interaction of generations of these men. Or the lack thereof. This is a family where if something is worth saying, it goes unsaid. It is not some simple-minded Iron John routine about getting in touch with the inner man. There is the sexual jealousy of Jack towards his father and the older man's new girlfriend, who, falling half-way between their respective ages, has an erotic pull on both. Or the vicious beating Ward receives that causes him to loose an eye. Were the sailors in his hotel room that night because of a bar room dispute, or for sex with the cautious reporter? The older sibling collects speculation like Jack collects sexual frustration.

The Paperboy is a still novel, largely uneventful in its detail, possessed of an immense, moving power in the big picture. There is humanity, but, in telling us that there are no intact men, the root is an honest, involving, and ultimately welcome pessimism for the human condition.