COCKFIGHTER by Charles Willeford (Vintage: $9)....

COCKFIGHTER by Charles Willeford (Vintage: $9). Popular crime writer Charles Willeford chronicles an unscrupulous man’s rise to prominence as a cockfighter in the rural South in this latest installment in Vintage’s Black Lizard pulp fiction series. Frank Mansfield works hard at being a ne’er-do-well: He ignores his considerable musical talent and focuses all his attention on training and fighting his specially bred roosters. His obsession centers on his rivalry with another cockfighter, and the two men bluff, attack and parry, like birds in a ring. Willeford draws a chillingly realistic portrait of the barbaric practice of cockfighting, and the men who ignore its cruelties and present it as a sport with rules and, perversely, a code of honor.