Considering that Dashiell Hammett began to make his indelible mark on popular fiction around mid-1920s, it is perhaps not amiss to trace the popular elements in Sanctuary to the new and exciting genre of hard-boiled fiction. One need not even think of the multiple instances of violence or of the investigation which Benbow undertakes in order to bring Popeye to trial (although without the hard-nosed tenacity of the Continental Op or Sam Spade). The author's interest in the erratic process of justice and retribution, captured in the mistrials, false evidence, wrong court sentences and executions, owes also to the detective fictions of the era.

This is not to say that Sanctuary resembles a hard-boiled novel in more than a superficial outline. If anything, the author is much closer to Dostoyevsky in his relentless psychological ruminations on the nature of crime and punishment. Like Hemingway&mdash...