Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell
In small Ozark towns like West Table, Missouri, what you are is where you're born and in Venus Holler, what you are isn't much. For Bev Merridew, who can turn a trick as easily as roll a joint, life in Venus Holler is tolerable. For her 19-year-old and angry daughter, a life like Bev's isn't good enough. Jamalee Merridew with her tomato red hair and her barely suppressed rage has plans and they don't include Venus Holler or especially Bev. In fact they depend on her drop dead beautiful brother, Jason, the object of adoring libidinous attention from every West Table female. Jamalee thinks he's her ticket out. But Jason may just be the country queer and in the hills and hollows of the Ozarks that is about the most dangerous and also the most courageous thing a man could be.
Into their midst comes Sammy Barlach, a man with too many file numbers on his record who is passing through West Table on the way to nowhere, looking to be a loser in fresh surroundings. Jamalee thinks he may just be the muscle she and Jason need.
But Sammy is better at botched burglaries than security and when Jason turns up dead and the cops call it an accident even Bev is roused from her easy going acceptance of the system. Pooling their talents the misfit threesome set out to expose the solid citizens who thought it was no harm, no foul to kill a country queer.