Sanctuary

A dark, fast-moving novel of crime in Mississippi and Memphis. Temple Drake, a young woman from a respectable family, falls into the hands of a gang of bootleggers after a car accident, and her ordeal draws in a lawyer, a wrongly accused man and a menacing criminal named Popeye. Faulkner uses the lurid conventions of crime fiction to examine corruption, fear and the failures of a supposedly respectable society. It was controversial on publication and remains disturbing and powerful.