WHERE TROUBLE SLEEPS

WHERE TROUBLE SLEEPS Clyde Edgerton (Algonquin, $18.95) Edgerton, evoking Flannery O'Connor, composes chatty, tone-perfect tales of small-town life that illuminate the knife edge between satire and nostalgia. Here, evil comes to sleepy Listre, N.C., circa 1950, in the form of a stranger with a pencil-thin mustache and a trunkful of dirty movies. Listre is the kind of rustic crossroads where the most exciting event in years was a collision between a mule and a pickup truck, where boys slip over to the Gulf station for a Nehi and a peek at the pinup calendar, and where everybody knows everybody else's secrets. It's the kind of place, in other words, where it seems like nothing ever changes -- until the fateful day when everything changes at once. A-