The Bottoms is narrated by Harry Collins, an old man who is obsessively reflecting on certain key experiences of his childhood. In 1933, the year that forms the centerpiece of the narrative, Harry is 11 years old and living with his family on a farm outside of Marvel Creek, Texas, near the Sabine River bottoms.

Harry's world changes forever when he discovers the corpse of a young black woman tied to a tree in the forest near his home. The woman, eventually identified as a local prostitute, has been murdered, molested, and mutilated. As Harry will soon discover, she is the first in a series of similar victims of a new, unprecedented sort of monster: a traveling serial killer.

From his privileged position as the son of constable Jacob Collins, Harry watches the amateur investigation unfold. As more bodies surface, not all of them "colored," the mood of the local residents darkens. Racial tensions, never far from the surface, gradually kindle. When circumstantial evidence implicates an ancient, innocent black man named Mose, the Ku Klux Klan mobilizes, initiating a chilling lynching that will occupy a permanent place in Harry Collins's memories.

With Mose dead and the threat to local white women presumably put to rest, the residents of Marvel Creek resume their normal lives, only to find that the actual killer remains at large, continuing to threaten the safety and stability of the town.

Lansdale uses this murder investigation to open a window on an insular, poverty-stricken, racially divided community. With humor, precision, and great narrative economy, he evokes the society of Marvel Creek in all its alternating tawdriness and nobility, offering us a varied, convincing portrait of a world that has receded into history. At the same time, he offers a richly detailed re-creation of the vibrant, dangerous physical landscapes that were part of that world.

The setting is Atlanta, Georgia — a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist, Charles Croker, once a college football star, is now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality.

Charlie has a 29,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife, and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt.

Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, an idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system.

Back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek “the Canon” Fanon, a homegrown product of the city’s slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city’s delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high.

Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates — Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker’s deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to this hilarious and telling novel — Tom Wolfe’s most outstanding achievement to date.