Memory expert Uncle L DL is 91, bedridden and exists on bananas, Vienna sausages and sickly sweet port. So how did he manage to kill his lazy home attendant, a former Klu Klux Klansman? Logic never really counted for much in Tula Springs, Louisiana, where you face "being completely ruined or dying of boredom". Heroine Olive Mackie is troubled. Fired from his real estate job, her husband now sells cheese snacks and is seeing her best friend. The Mormons have recruited her son. Meanwhile, Olive is on borrowed time as a lowly City Hall typist. Penury draws her to Ozone Dental College. She falls for the inept "Dr" Bates, the world's oldest dental student.
Snobbery, racism, gossip - Wilcox has tapped Small Town USA's comic potential. But this novel suffers in comparison with an hilarious earlier pair, Modern Baptists and North Gladiola. Funny enough, but his folksy, detailed, manic formula seems exhausted.
