Another Southern story

Curtis Wilkie in 2002 (Nancy Jacobs photo)

According to Publishers Lunch, an online book-world scuttlebutt site, our pal and former Globe colleague, Curtis Wilkie, has inked a deal with Harmony Books for a book entitled "King of Torts," about lawyer Dickie Scruggs, who won fabulous judgments in tobacco and asbestos cases, but may also end up in jail for bribery. PL calls it "part Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, part Barbarians at the Gate."

With his Stonewall Jackson look and rumbling Mississippi accent, Curtis was always a unique presence at the Globe. After years of covering wars and presidential campaigns, he was asked by former editor Matt Storin in the late 1990s to cover the South as a beat, from his home in New Orleans. I once asked Curtis, during a phone conversation, how one could do that. After all, I said, you can't imagine a reporter being asked to "cover" the North, or the East.

Curtis replied, "Waal, ah asked Matt Storin that, and he said, 'Just cover it lahk it's a furrin country.'"