Pearson treads his trademark turf but seems a trifle off stride in this Southern gothic romp set in smalltown Virginia. Taking his leave of Sheriff Ray Tatum and Tatum's ranger girlfriend, Kit Carson (the heroes of Blue Ridge and Polar), Pearson introduces corporate dropout Paul Tatum, a reclusive accountant specializing in creative tax returns. Despite himself, Paul is dating Mona, a predatory divorced single mom with a three-year-old daughter, while pining away for Maud Hooper, a remarkably comely local housewife. Believing Maud to be abused by her brutish Mafia-connected lawyer husband, Paul enlists the aid of his neighbor Stoney, a local jack-of-all-trades who is the spitting image of the dragon-slayer hero in Carpaccio's famous 16th-century masterpiece, St. George and the Dragon. The bourbon-fortified knights errant obsessively plot Maud's rescue, as Paul halfheartedly attempts to disentangle himself from Mona. Humorous but at times downright distracting digressions include a porn-fixated cattleman, an elitist cur homesick for New York garbage, a flock of evangelical Episcopalians, a side trip to Venice to view the Carpaccio and the saga of a car mechanic turned barber school operator. Pearson is noted for his iconoclastic, effusively anecdotal prose style, but his latest burlesque flails in a few too many directions. Still, even when is a bit out of sync, Pearson always manages a telling look at human frailty. Regional author tour. (Oct.)
