Beef steak, stew beef, roast, and lamb.

Green tomatoes and black-eyed peas,

Sweet potatoes and all kinds of teas.

Wilkinson has to rely on snippets like this and bombard the reader with 16-page quotations that lose their vigor as the ink dries on the page. I want to see the Garland Bunting that told David Letterman he wasn't concerned that his livelihood as an undercover agent was threatened by an appearance on national television. No, after all these years, Bunting told Letterman that after more than 30 years of law enforcement, a little national exposure might add a little challenge and make his conniving games more interesting.

Wilkinson stands too much in awe of Bunting and can't quite capture the presence and spontaneity he exuded on national TV. Wilkinson goes all the way to Scotland Neck to write, "Standing alone and calling them in the dark, he looked like a figure out of history."

When Bunting and Wilkinson do go out on a stake-out together as the book concludes, the author approaches the more familiar ground of the Midnights chronicles. But the effort is abortive, the incident doesn't amount to much and leaves the reader teased and frustrated and no more satisfied.

Bunting, in fact, seems bored by his city-slicker of a biographer. He wants to be off alone hunting coons or chasing down moon-shiners--anywhere.

Anywhere but talking to The New Yorker.