Girls love Dennis Lenahan, he’s cool and he’s a daredevil: dives from the top of an 80-for ladder into a nine-foot tank. Dennis is performing in Tunica, Mississippi, the casino capital of the South, when he witnesses a murder and the local Dixie Mafia warns him, “You talk, you’re dead.”

Along comes Robert Taylor, a black gangsta with style from Detroit. Robert also has a death-defying act, he’s sleeping with his boss’s wife. Robert has his own agenda for taking on the Cornbread Cosa Nostra and wants Dennis to come in with him. The story thrives on its characters: Chickasaw Charlie, a hotel “celebrity” host; Vernice Dennis’s landlady, who has the whitest thighs he’s ever seen; Arlen Novis and his thugs, as bad as good ole boys can get. There’s a big-surprise love angle—several of the women as possibilities. The big scene is a Civil War battle reenactment: Yankees and Confederates facing each other with Enfield rifles and Colt revolvers. What makes this reenactment different, some of those guns are loaded.

What readers will wonder: is Dennis hooked up with the bad guys or the really bad guys?