THE TWO-BEAR MAMBO

Here's the deal: Lt. Marvin Hanson will overlook Leonard Pine's habit of setting fire to the house next door (observers agree that his third experiment in arson is his most successful yet) if he and his white buddy Hap Collins will truck out to Grovetown to find out what's become of Florida Grange, Esq., Hanson's current (and Hap's former) lover. Planning to branch out into investigative journalism, ambitious lawyer Florida was determined to reopen the case of Bobby Joe Soothe, who allegedly hanged himself in jail after his homicide arrest. Trouble is that Grovetown, a tad behind the times, didn't cotton to a black girl's poking around in a black boy's suicide, and the natives--from lumber king Jackson Brown to redneck Chief Cantuck and his neanderthal sidekick--aren't too crazy about a biracial investigating team either. Hap and leonard start off by getting refused rooms at every lodging in town and asked out of Maude Rainforth's luncheonette--and that's on Christmas Day. Before they close the case, they'll be pounded to multiethnic pulps, escorted out of Grovetown by a shotgun brigade, and saddened to uncover an unexpected, but depressingly familiar, motive for murder. Like Hap and leonard's debut (Mucho Mojo, 1994), this wickedly funny tale is as refreshing and flavorsome as a jolt of moonshine.