cover image JUNIOR RAY

JUNIOR RAY

John Pritchard, . . NewSouth, $23.95 (158pp) ISBN 978-1-58838-111-8

Mississippi state tourist officials won't be handing this book out anytime soon, though they might be surprised by its effectiveness if they did. Pritchard's hilariously tasteless debut novel is the profanity-laced story of a racist, violent sheriff's deputy in the Mississippi delta of the 1950s. Junior Ray Loveblood is an ignorant bully who sees no reason to carry a pistol if he can't shoot someone. He doesn't like rich folks or black people, and he especially hates Leland Shaw, an obscure white Mississippi poet and crazy World War II veteran who has just escaped from a mental hospital. The story of Junior Ray's pursuit of Shaw is extracted from the unrepentant deputy 30 years later by an academic researcher with an interest in Shaw's lost (and found) notebooks. Junior Ray, accompanied by his dim, slack-jawed sidekick, Voyd Mudd, searches everywhere for Shaw, but most folks, especially Shaw's equally goofy family and their black neighbors, do everything they can to bamboozle and trick the cops. Junior Ray's peculiar views on marriage, redneck sex, religion and law enforcement are laugh-out-loud funny, as are his descriptions of getting lost in the woods, finding a German submarine and being rescued by a troop of snickering Boy Scouts. As Junior Ray's pompous interviewer points out, "this book is not for the squeamish," but its irreverent humor will win over most. (May)