In the beginning, Hadrian Coleman's walls existed only in his mind.

His dad, the local vet, was the most respected man in Shepherd County, a corner of East Texas where iniquity was winning out over equity. Doc Coleman was the most popular guy around, too, and the most righteous. Before the doc died, when Hadrian was only 14, Hadrian heard his father curse only twice, once on the night the Klan came to threaten him for treating a black man's mule.

The doc's goodness was exaggerated by the comparison with other county leaders. Justice was for sale in the crooked courtroom of Horace Castleberry, and justice was often denied in the local state prison, ruled ruthlessly by Thunderball Hope, who would think nothing of throwing a con in "the Oven" if it suited him.

The pressure to be as good as his dad is at the base of "Hadrian's Walls," the engrossing first novel by Robert Draper, a journalist who's a full-blooded Texan with a full-bodied gift for storytelling.

When the doc died, Hadrian started to drift in a dangerous direction, and his mother turned to Castleberry for help, a decision that could hardly have gone more wrong. Within a week, the judge had tried to molest Hadrian's best friend, Hadrian had come to his rescue, and in the scuffle that resulted, Hadrian had broken the judge's neck. Almost overnight, Hadrian's walls had turned to stone.

What ensues is intricate and clever. If the full circumstances had been told at trial, Hadrian probably wouldn't have gotten 50 years. The friend Hadrian had saved was none other than Sonny Hope, Thunderball's only child. Thunderball wouldn't let Sonny testify, but figured he could protect Hadrian once he was inside. At the first opportunity, he takes him out of the general population and installs him as his house boy. He thinks he's being benevolent, protecting Hadrian, paying off Sonny's debt. But he's really giving Hadrian a front-row seat to see how he might have grown up had he not stood up for Sonny. Would becoming some hard con's pretty boy have been any more devastating?

Just as Hadrian had learned at his father's knee, so had Sonny, but his lessons had been in control and manipulation. When someone filed a civil-rights lawsuit over the Oven, it was Sonny whose testimony ended his father's reign. Before long, it was Sonny who had taken over as director; now he was Hadrian's protector, as well as his debtor.

It's clear from the first pages that Hadrian is deep-down good, and yet 15 years later, he kills again and goes on the lam mere days before his parole would have taken effect. Eventually, Sonny wins him a pardon and brings him back to Shepherdsville, but with a cold and devious motive; Hadrian's walls rise anew, in the form of obligation.

Draper's descriptions are often delicious. Castleberry's smile is "little more than a flesh wound on his rancid face." Later, Hadrian comes to realize, "I wore their blood, Wexler's and Judge Castleberry's, just as I'd worn a number on my back. The awareness of this had snuck up on me, as a killer would."

The author draws the East Texas backdrop convincingly, and provides a rich cast whose actions ring true without approaching cliche. There are people to admire, people to hate, and people to puzzle over. A particular bit of delight is Mimi, Hadrian's only sibling. She's grown up to be hopeless white trash, a result he blames himself for. And he does seem to have influenced her: When she spies something she likes, it isn't "keen," or "cool"; it's "killer."

So deftly does Draper mesh the elements of word play, plot, characterization, and human insight through this novel that his ending is slightly a letdown. Despite that, though, the race to see whether Hadrian's walls ever come tumbling down is a pleasure to read.