LAST OF THE DIXIE HEROES

Abrahams’s tenth suspenser, Crying Wolf (2000), had a drop-off in body count but featured a nostalgic windup phonograph, wonderful Caruso, and old brandy. This time, he takes a welcome dive into southern history

“It’s always 1863 in the reenactment world,” Roy Hill is told when he first visits the Seventh Tennessee Regiment outside Atlanta for the reenactment of Civil War battles. Both Roy and best friend Gordo, an alcoholic who still swoons over the War Between the States, work in the Asia/Oceania section of Chemerica, a chemicals company that ships worldwide and has just been bought by Globax. Roy expects he'll be fired. Instead, he’s promised a huge raise—if the new forces will actually grant it. Meanwhile, his beautiful wife Marcia has cost him an expensive divorce and moved in with a loser. Marcia herself feels she’s made a doozy of a mistake taking up with Barry, and even beds Roy when she visits Rhett, their 11-year-old who is being troubled by a bully at school. Then his cracker father has fatal liver failure; Roy and Gordo get canned when their whole floor at Globax gets right-sized; and Rhett is expelled for a week for fighting. What to do? It seems Roy’s great-great-grandfather was a famous Seventh Tennessee officer and passed down to him his valuable musket and uniform with a bullet hole through the heart. So Roy will be a big fish if he enlists in the Seventh—and, when he catches Marcia in a most intimate situation with a doctor she plans to move to Manhattan with, taking Rhett, he drinks some Old Grand Dad, gives a Rebel yell, and goes to sign up. Soon live rounds fly on the battlefield, bodies drop, the war’s in earnest, Roy falls for a girl disguised as a reb, and Rhett becomes the drummer boy who wins the war.

The writing? Charm to spare, a splendid departure for Abrahams, though bloodlusting fans may howl.