Wit's End

This entertaining thriller begins with New York Times sportswriter Ted Miller's return to his hometown, Marshall, Miss. To all appearances, Marshall is just a seedy little Southern village justifiably proud of its high school football team that never loses. Beneath its placid exterior, however, flows a subterranean current of crime, a current that rises to the surface with the murder of the school superintendent. The cops seize a black teenager as the most likely perpetrator, but Ted's sharply honed reporter's instincts tell him they're wrong, and he sets out to unravel the mystery on his own. Scafidel, who has nine previous books including several thrillers to his credit (under five different pen names), here spins a consistently engrossing tale. His gallery of funky local characters is amusing, even when they're too good to be true, and the assumption underlying the plot--that organized crime might find it profitable to take over a poor rural town--is plausible. (June)