Pop. 1280 (2006)

Nick Corey presents himself as an ineffective small-town sheriff, a pose that helps him duck responsibility while pursuing his own interests. His apparently casual voice is the trap: the more reasonable he tries to sound, the more alarming his account becomes. Choose this for institutional power used as personal cover. The racist and misogynistic world, including its narrator's attitudes, is deliberately ugly rather than an invitation to admire him.