THE HEATHENS

The usual suspects in Tibbehah County have to make room for a new firecracker in town.

Or more precisely, from town, since no sooner does Tanya Jane Byrd realize that she’s the prime suspect in the murder of her no-account mother, Gina, than she takes to the road with her 9-year-old brother, John Wesley, her boyfriend, Ladarius McCade, and her best friend, Holly Harkins, a waitress at the Captain’s Table who’s thoughtful enough to steal her momma’s minivan for the occasion. Sheriff Quinn Colson, back in the saddle after his latest round of job-related injuries in The Revelators (2020), gives chase along with Deputy U.S. Marshals Lillie Virgil and Charlie Hodge and the folks who really did have Gina Byrd killed, dismembered, and stashed in a bleach-filled barrel in a local dump in the first place. But it’s really TJ’s show, and she makes the most of the spotlight even before she hits the road, demanding that Gina’s much older boyfriend, Chester Pratt, return the $18,980 insurance settlement he took from Gina. Chester, deeply in debt to Dixie Mafia stalwart Johnny T. Stagg, is in no position to pay back the money; in fact, he’s getting serious pressure from Stagg’s enforcers. Things get even hotter when TJ and her crew hook up with budding social influencer Chastity Bloodgood, who offers them the hospitality of her car-dealer father’s vacation home in Hot Springs if only they’ll kill her despised stepmother. The combustible mixture of variously violent personalities leaves less room than usual for Quinn’s self-critical memories of Hamp Beckett, his late uncle and predecessor, and they seem more out of place than usual when they come.

A wild chase with walk-on roles for every lowlife from North Mississippi to New Orleans.