Breaking with many conventions of the genre, the novel holds a satirical mirror to society by entering the minds of two men at the edge of sanity. Sheriff McCarthy, a church-going family man, is trying to keep a boundary between the sordidness of his investigations and his private life. He is also trying to keep faith in human nature. But Franck, willing to kill for the sake of a good pun, dominates the story. He is a disturbing, violent, decadent character, a man always rushing to the bathroom for another line of coke, revealing the darker workings of the case with a blood curdling laugh.