Arkansas-born and -bred first-novelist Adcock makes a rollicking debut in which his narrator's love of all things English adds an unexpected sophistication to the homespun charm of his tale. Arcadia, Ark., a small town in a dry county, is set on its ear by the arrival of four decidedly eccentric Englishmen fleeing the ``persecution'' of high English taxes. The narrator, a ``shameless Anglophile'' and teacher at the local state college, naturally finds himself acting as a liaison between the four baffled, bibulous Englishmen and the equally baffled townfolk. Charles Pierponte Mugsbottom is the first to arrive, followed by his three friends: baronet Sir Montague Capulet, Captain (ret.) ``Biffy'' Smythe-Gardner and Reginald Dipswizzle, the source of the group's travelling funds by virtue of a regular remittance from his appalled family in Hertfordshire. Soon after they arrive, Mugsbottom is caught up in a dispute with the local poet, Homer Joe Tennyson; Smythe-Gardner discovers pay-per-view porno films; and Dipswizzle becomes involved with a veterinarian's widow, who also happens to be the organist at the Presbyterian church as well as the town nymphomaniac. The Brits' Arkansan idyll is ruined, however, when Mugsbottom's nemesis, the flamingly affected poet Tinksly Murk, accepts the post of poet-in-residence at the local college, and when Dipswizzle, the English party's sole source of income, takes an unexpectedly tragic interest in crop-dusting. Though initially somewhat stiff, the story unfolds into a picaresque, lighthearted hybrid of American and English comic style. (Nov.)
