Train

This novel is the story of an attempted hijack on a yacht and a 17-year-old caddy, Train. Dexter brings the two stories together with a police detective who investigates the crime and befriends Train on the golf course.

Train, main character, takes awhile to get to know him, his name being symbolic: After quite a few pages and incidents, we learn "Train" is a nickname inspired by his first name, "Lionel." Not a great joke, but it works.

Pete dexter's fictions have no label, no category, no genre beyond, maybe, 2d-half 20th-century americana. they are finely written in sturdy, bluff sentences that give a reader no place to hide from their blunt narrative marches, and you are never two steps beyond wondering if they are, indeed, fictions.