Ross Thomas, who died in 1995, deserves to be remembered with other great masters of the crime novel of the latter twentieth century. He wrote a number of intriguing books that were cleverly plotted, filled with interesting characters and that often dealt with the corruption that lies just under the surface of American life.

The Fools in Town Are on Our Side, which was first published in 1970, takes its inspiration from a quote by Mark Twain. The main protagonist, Lucifer Dye, has had a most unconventional life. As a child he was orphaned and then raised in a whorehouse in Shanghai, just before the Second World War. There he mastered a number of foreign languages and learned many important lessons that would serve him well in life. Later he joined the military and was later recruited by a mysterious governmental intelligence agency called Section 2.

When a mission goes wrong, Lucifer winds up spending three months in an uncomfortable Chinese prison (like there might be any comfortable ones?), and at that point he takes his severance pay and leaves the government's employ. At loose ends and with nothing better to do, he accepts an offer from a man named Victor Orcutt to join him and his associates in completely corrupting a small southern town. The objective of the mission is to ultimately clean up the town and, of course, to profit Victor Orcutt Associates.

The team arrives in Swankerton, the targeted town, and gets to work. The task is cleverly designed and involves a lot of odd, strange and curious characters. Inevitably, there's a lot of double-dealing involved and a fair amount of violence. Thomas tells the story, interweaving into it the details of Lucifer Dye's life from the time he was born in a small Montana town until the end of the mission in Swankerton. It's a fun read, very skillfully done and those readers who haven't read Thomas might well want to make his acquaintance.