Glory Be: A Glory Broussard Mystery

This debut novel by Danielle Arceneaux is intended to be the first in her "Glory Broussard" series. Set in contemporary Layfayette, Louisiana, Glory is not a typical detective story protagonist. Not that other detectives aren't outspoken and out for justice--just as Glory is--, or that we haven't encountered black detectives, or women sleuths, or investigators "of a certain age," but Glory is all of these. She has not had an easy life, growing up in the racially segregated South, and it has recently been made even harder because her husband left her for a younger woman. Then she learns that her closest friend from childhood, Sister Amity Gay, is dead. Glory will NOT be kept away from the crime scene and is shocked to see Amity with a rope around her neck and to hear that the police are calling it suicide and will not be pursuing further investigation. Glory knows Amity would never have killed herself and she aims to find the murderer. Glory's daughter, Delphine, a successful lawyer in New York City, has come home to help her mother sort out the divorce, and for reasons of her own that she's not sharing. She is shocked to find her mother has become a hoarder and that Glory has taken over the bookie business of her unfaithful husband.

The Washington Post offers: "Danielle Arceneaux offers a remarkable debut novel that blends a character study with a tightly woven mystery that delves into dark corners of racism and corruption." Publishers Weekly also likes this book: "Arceneaux successfully avoids a mountain of cozy clichés—no bookshops, baked goods, or love interest for Glory—and works potent critiques of Southern racism into her well-oiled plot."

The setting is richly drawn, the characters are well developed and the plot is complex and tricky enough to keep you guessing. I will watch for the future adventures of Glory Broussard.

The Guardians

The list of John Grisham's legal thrillers is long and this recent (2019) entry continues to demonstrate his ability to make legal thrillers totally engrossing. Guardian Ministries is a small (3) group of attorneys whose sole purpose is to get innocent people out of jail. When the book opens, they have managed to save 8 souls in 10 years and would do more if they had more money. Cullen Post--former public defender, and occasional Episcopal priest--does most of the traveling to investigate the cold cases in their efforts to vindicate the clients they take on. As the book opens, Post is sitting with a client, Duke Russell, on death row; his final meal has been delivered when the stay from the 11th Circuit Court arrives and halts the execution. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief; they have more time to exonerate their client. They have also recently taken on a new client, Quincy Miller, who was convicted 22 years ago of killing his former divorce attorney in the small town of Seabrook, Florida. The conviction is based on junk science--hair analysis and blood spatter--and a flashlight that conveniently disappears before the trial is the only piece of evidence that connected Miller to the crime. The goal of Guardian Ministries is not to find the real killers, but just to prove that their clients are innocent. However, their efforts have come to the attention of those who did actually kill the attorney and they're coming for Guardian in one way or another. The settings in the South are very atmospheric. Cullen Post is a very interesting character whose back story helps the reader understand why he would undertake such frustrating and demanding work. The book digs into the nasty issue of disproportionate rates of conviction, incarceration and death sentences for Black people. The case of Quincy Miller is based on the actual case of a Black man, Joe Bryan, who has been in prison for over 30 years.  And Guardian Ministries is base on an actual organization, Centurion Ministries, with the same goal of exonerating wrongly convicted people.

Maureen Corrigan offers a laudatory review in the Washington Post, and like Kirkus, hopes to see further stories about this set of characters. The New York Journal of Books says this book is "as gripping as it is shocking, with plenty of twists and turns you never see coming."

Kindred

Apparently this 2009 book by Octavia Butler (1947-2006) has been recently reissued and I saw reviews that caught my attention. A long time ago, I read Butler's Parable of the Sower about a post-apocolyptic world with a hyperempathic teen as the protagonist. Butler was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" grant and the PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award. 

In this book, set alternately in 1976 and the early 1800's, Dana, a black woman is married to a white man, Kevin, and they gave just moved to a new home. While unpacking books, Dana's world disappears and she finds herself in some woods and sees a young boy, Rufus, drowning in the nearby river. She saves him but is confronted by the boy's father holding a rifle. She quickly realizes that this is nowhere she knows and, it turns out, no time that she knows. Just as suddenly, she is back in her own home dazed and confused. Within the next several weeks, she is "called" by Rufus whenever he is in mortal danger. She always manages to save his life, having determined from entries in the family bible that he is in fact one of her ancestors. But with every trip to the antebellum south (Maryland), she is put in mortal danger because she is black. Each trip takes longer in the past time--from hours, to weeks, to months-- but is only a matter or minutes, hours or days in the present. At one point, Kevin is holding her hand when she is called and he gets left behind--for 5 years in the past and over a week in the present. Rufus knows his life is dependent on Dana and yet he cannot entirely overcome the views and behaviors that surround him and, at one point, he has Dana whipped for disobeying him. This was in many ways a hard book to read because of the terrible mistreatment of black people, but Butler is a compelling writer and it was also hard to put down. 

"‘[Her] evocative, often troubling, novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power and, ultimately, what it means to be human’ New York Times." (from her website). Also reviews from Kirkus, (of the new paperback edition),  Publishers Weekly (review of the graphic novel adaptation), NPR interviews the creators of the graphic novel adaptation.

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

I had never heard of this author, Grady Hendrix, but he has had some best sellers in the horror genre and the premise of this book, that a group of southern housewives take on an ancient vampire who is preying on the local children, was too tempting to pass up. A group of fairly well-to-do  housewives in 1990's Charleston, South Carolina, surreptitiously enjoy a book club focused on true crime, happily discussing how serial killers get away with their dark deeds. One wife tells her husband she is attending a Bible study group. When a crotchety neighbor dies in a rather ghoulish fashion, a man claiming to be a distant relative, James Harris, moves into the woman's house. Patricia Cunningham is bored with her life as wife to a successful psychiatrist, caretaker for his demented mother, and mother of two teenage children, and she wishes "something exciting would happen around here." She does the neighborly thing and takes a casserole over to the new neighbor, but gets worried when he does not answer the door. She goes into the house to find him dead--she thinks--and gives him mouth to mouth resuscitation (having been a nurse in her earlier years).  He "revives" and tells her he has a medical condition that makes him sensitive to daylight and that his wallet with his identification has been stolen. Patricia agrees to help with paying some overdue utility bills and setting up a checking account with some money he "found" under the house. That night, he comes to return the casserole dish and is invited in to meet Patricia's family. Anyone who has read vampire stories knows the significance of that move. By the time Patricia begins to suspect that he is not who he claims to be and is, in fact, something very dangerous, the damage is done. Children begin disappearing and/or dying in a poor neighboring Black community, and Patricia does some sleuthing of her own, discovering James in the back of a van feeding on one of the children. She tries to convince her fellow book group members that they need to take issues into their own hands, but the women are co-opted by their husbands who have become bosom buddies with James and think the women are all hysterical over-reactors. Patricia's husband actually puts her in a mental hospital for a time and when she comes out, she keeps her head down. Meanwhile James has ingratiated himself socially and financially with the community, getting the men to invest in a new real estate development. Patricia discovers one night that James has come into their home and is feeding off her older daughter and this galvanizes her to try once more to plot his demise. The most religious member of the book club  believes her but thinks she can handles James on her own, given her strong faith in God. She is sadly mistaken. The rest of the the book group eventually agree to help Patricia in a desperate attempt to protect their children from this greedy monster. The book is a bit grisly at times but uses the device of under-values and disaffected housewives to good measure in setting up the tension in the story.
Kirkus considers this to be Hendrix's "best book yet." And USA Today highlights "incisive social commentary and meaningful character development" as well as the female bonding that make these women ultimately a formidable opponent to incipient evil. They warn, however, that this is a "proper horror novel" and not for the faint of heart.
READ this interview on NPR with Hendrix to learn the backstory for this book. It's very personal and thoughtful and will add to your appreciation of what he's written.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

This atmospheric mystery by Tom Franklin was this month's pick (June, 2019) for my mystery book group. This is Franklin's 3rd novel, which received the CWA Gold Dagger Award in 2011 for best crime novel. While some reviewers have called his prose "luminous" (Booklist), I found it evocative, so effectively creating a mood of sweltering, suffocating, ennui and apathy, that you almost start to sweat. If you never wanted to live in the rural deep South, like me, this would remind you of why. The Washington Post notes that this book "makes a haunting demonstration of Faulkner's claim that 'the past is never dead. It's not even past.'"
As a boy, Larry Ott is too nerdy, too interested in books (especially horror stories) and snakes to be the son his father wants. These characteristics don't make him popular at school either in 1970's Chabot, Mississippi. The southern way they teach children to spell the name of the state and the river  is "M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-humpback letter-humpback letter-I Really!?) When a black woman and her son move into a primitive cabin on the Ott's land, Larry connects with the boy, Silas, teaching him how to hunt and fish. At school, they barely acknowledge each other, both because black and white do not mix, but also because Silas has gained some stature as the school's star baseball player and Larry is still so uncool. When a popular girl in school asks Larry on a date for the drive-in movies, he is thrilled; only it turns out that she just wants a ride to meet her real boyfriend. Larry, ever accommodating, drops her off at a designated point along the highway and goes on to the movies, pretending Cindy is with him. When he goes back to pick her up, she never shows. In fact, she disappears, and the fact that she had a "date" with Larry that night makes him the prime suspect, even though there is no concrete evidence and no body. Larry and his family are ostracized by the community, driving his father to an early death, his mother into a care home and Larry into the military, where he becomes a mechanic. When he comes home, he takes over his father's old automotive repair shop, but the small town has a long memory and "scary Larry" never get a customer.  He is forced to sell off chunk's of his father's land to the big timber company to make ends meet. Silas went away to college and returns 20 years later to be the town's only policeman. When a 2nd girl goes missing, Larry again becomes the focus of attention, and someone shoots him. Not only does Silas find the dead girl buried in the old cabin where he lived with his mother, but only he knows that Larry was not responsible for Cindy's disappearance decades ago. What he reveals to prove Larry's innocence is going to bring his life down around his ears. It's a heartbreaking book in many ways, but so well written that it's hard to put down, and there is a glimmer of hope in the end.
Not everyone was enamored of this book as the reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly demonstrate. Others, such as the Washington Post, the Guardian, and this interview from NPR are very positive.

Sweet Tea Revenge

Not hard to guess from the title that this is from Laura Childs' "Tea Shop Mystery" series (#14 to be precise). These are engaging reads for several reasons: they are well written with interesting characters; I love the setting descriptions of Charleston, SC; plots and story trajectory are somewhat predictable but nevertheless sufficiently challenging; they are full of luscious descriptions of teas and food; the recipes for the teas and food follow the text plus a lot of other interesting tea resources.
Delaine Dish, owner of the Cotton Duck boutique and friend of Theo"s, is finally getting married--to a very wealthy man-- and Theodosia is to be the maid of honor. But then the groom turns up dead and Delaine pleads with Theo to find out who killed her future husband.  It could be the long-estranged step-son who has suddenly re-insinuated himself into his step-father's life and law practice, or perhaps the vicious ex-girlfriend, or maybe even Dougan's law partner. In her inimitable fashion, Theo manages to investigate all the leads, help the police, and still keep the Indigo tea shop perking along with help from baker extraordinaire, Haley and tea-master, Drayton.

Tea Shop Mysteries

When I am in the mood for light reading, I often look for another book in Laura Child's Tea Shop Mysteries, which are set in Charleston, SC. Not only do I enjoy the mysteries themselves, but I love the descriptions of the architecture in Charleston, the atmospheric descriptions of the South, the characters, the elaborate descriptions of teas, and the recipes that are included at the end. For my recent trip to Maine, I downloaded Devonshire Scream and Shades of Earl Grey.
In Devonshire Scream (17th in the series, which includes, of course, a recipe for Devonshire cream), a trunk show of high-end estate jewelry is brutally interrupted when a large truck smashes through the front of the store, Heart's Desire, and several masked individuals jump out and smash the glass cases, taking everything in sight. In the process, the niece of the store owner is impaled by a piece of glass and dies. Theodosia agrees to help shop owner and good friend Brooke Crockett find the people who destroyed her business and killed her niece. The FBI is brought in because the thieves are suspected of several  robberies in other states, and Detective Tidwell is on the case locally. But Theodosia has resources none of them have with her inquisitive mind, deep knowledge of Charleston and its people, and her intrepid tea master and fellow sleuth, Drayton. Theodosia's plan to lay a trap at the upcoming Heritage Society event, which will feature a real Faberge egg, almost backfires when tea shop chef Haley is kidnapped, but all comes right in the end.

Theodosia's adopted rescue dog is named Earl Grey, and he is her companion and running partner. Theo and Earl Grey jog around Charleston at night, where she is sure to find possible suspects for the crimes in which she becomes embroiled. This time around, in the 3rd installment of the Tea Shop Mysteries, Shades of Earl Grey, what initially appears to be an accidental death of the groom at an engagement party for Theo's friend Delaine's niece, quickly becomes something more sinister--at least in Theodosia's mind--when the pricey family heirloom engagement ring goes missing. Then a sapphire necklace is stolen from the Heritage Society and Theodosia is hot on the trail of the thief/ murderer.

Killer Reunion

This 21st installment in the "Savannah Reid" mystery series by G.A. McKevett (a pseudonym of author Sonja Massie) finds Savannah and relatively new husband Det. Lt. Dirk Coulter on a visit to Savannah's home town of McGill, Georgia, for a 25th high school reunion. Savannah grew up dirt poor, the oldest of 9 siblings, taken from her abusive parents at a young age and raised by loving grandparents. There were a lot of cruel kids at school who made fun of her poverty, but Jeannette Parker was the mean queen of them all. Savannah is hoping for a triumphant return on the arm of her handsome and loving husband, as well as getting to celebrate Granny Reid's 80th birthday. Her ex-beau, one of Jeannette's many conquests, is now the county sheriff, as hunky and good-looking as ever and maybe still in love with Savannah. When Savannah gets into a cat fight with Jeannette at the reunion and then Jeannette turns up dead, guess who becomes the prime suspect and gets thrown in jail--into the same cell as her drunk and disorderly mother.?! But family and friends mortgage it all to get Savannah out on bail so she can figure out who the real killer is. She is well equipped to do this as she runs the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency back in Santa Carmelita, California, and her trusty sidekick Tammy, and Savannah's youngest brother fly in to help her. Well portrayed characters, complete with southern drawls, evocative sense of place, and realistic dynamics of a small town are all in favor of this book. Light fare reading and there is lots of it if you want to start at the beginning. Savannah, BTW is a big woman, making her a somewhat unusual protagonist, which is also refreshing. Brief review from Kirkus.

Ming Tea Murder

I really love this "Tea Shop Mystery" series by Laura Childs. They are like English cozies set in modern day Charleston, S. Carolina. Childs does such a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere of the city, which operates in many ways like a village with gossip and deceit and...of course, murder most foul. This time  the murder occurs at the museum where Theodosia's boyfriend Max is the Publicity Director. It is an invitation only gala to celebrate the museum's purchase of a genuine Chinese tea house from Shanghai, which was purchased in large part through the donations of one particular board member, Roger Webster. He is also the murder victim. In between trying to solve the murder and run her tea shop, Theo is also running in a 5K with her mixed breed dog, Earl Grey, taking over the chairwoman's duties a big Halloween party in the historic district to help out the victim's widow, Charlotte, and setting up a booth at the charity craft market to help out the local service dog organization. Oh, yes and tea shop is hosting several themed "tea's" to celebrate the Halloween holidays and a funeral luncheon.
To complicate matters even more, Max gets fired from his job--the sleazy museum director needs a scapegoat, apparently. On the other hand, perhaps those who seem to be in Max's camp aren't exactly to be trusted either.
Lots of tasty meals are served up at Indigo Tea Shop, all accompanied by tasty tea's, with recipes offered at the end of the book. These books are such a treat on so many levels, and there are a hefty number of them to choose from...this is the 16th in the series! See also my posts on Blood Orange Brewing and Oolong Dead.

Last Scene Alive

This is #7 in the Aurora Teagarden series by Charlaine Harris. Aurora is still sunk in the gray landscape of loss from the death of her husband Martin (see previous post for A Fool and His Honey). Apparently, her former writer friend, Robin Crusoe, has optioned one of his books--loosely based on a series of murders that occurred in Lawrenceton, which Aurora helped the police to solve. As a result, a film company is coming to town and some "B" level starlet--who may or may not still be involved with Robin--is going to play the Aurora-based character in the movie. Aurora does not want to have anything to do with it, and struggles not to take it personally when friends in town get involved in and excited about the the making of the movie. Of course, the actress playing Aurora gets murdered, and Aurora will have to find the killer or risk suffering the same fate. On the bright side, the flame seems to have been rekindled with Robin and Aurora begins to see a light at the end of her dark tunnel of mourning. Well done, fast-paced read.

A Fool and His Honey

This is book #6 in the "Aurora Teagarden" series by Charlaine Harris. I have not read these in order but found a couple of them in the "Friends" shop at the public library and I have really enjoyed her other series with Lily Bard and Sookie Stackhouse. In this book, Aurora is married to Martin, and although she no longer needs to work, she is back to being a part-time librarian at the public library in the the Atlanta bedroom community of Lawrenceton. One afternoon she answers the front door and is met by Martin's niece, Regina, carrying her new baby, Hayden. Aurora and Martin have a dinner engagement that evening and when they return, they find, Regina missing and her husband, Craig, lying dead on the stairs leading to the garage apartment. The baby is found safely hidden under the bed in the apartment. Inside, they find a groggy Rory,  Craig's best friend, sleeping behind the sofa in the den. Unable to reach Regina's mother (Martin's sister, Barby), who is on a cruise, and determined to get the baby with someone who can take care of him, they head to Ohio to find Craig's adoptive parents. When that doesn't work out, they decide to stay a few days at Martin's family farm, where he had been letting Regina and Craig--and apparently, Rory--live. But the person who killed Craig, and perhaps kidnapped Regina, is so desperate to find the baby, that more people will die. As with all Harris' characters and books, no one is free of dark character flaws, nor are the endings always happy. Still, she is a good writer, the plots are tight, the characters and sense of place are well-developed. No regrets at reading this one.

A Summons to Memphis

Written by Peter Taylor in 1986, and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1987, this is, according to the critics, a quintessentially Southern novel. Like his main character, Phillip Carver, Taylor was born in Nashville, and later lived in Memphis, where his father practiced law; and, like Carver, Taylor attended Vanderbilt, at least for a time. In the novel, Philip is "summoned" home to Memphis by his domineering older sisters to help prevent the marriage of their octogenarian father after the death of their mother. Phillip lives with a younger woman in Manhattan, working as a book editor and rare book dealer-- having escaped the cloistered environment of Memphis with financial help from these same sisters after the second World War. His older brother had been killed in the war. The senior Carver had moved the family from Nashville to Memphis following the financial scandals surrounding a large insurance and finance conglomerate owned by his then best friend and boss, Lewis Shackleford. Phillip was then just a teenager, and his older sisters were in their late teens, with their brother in between. The entire family felt betrayed by their father's decision to move, with Mrs.Carver comparing it to the Cherokee "Trail of Tears." She had come from a moneyed family in Nashville and "married down" somewhat to George Carver, although he came from a family with land and was an aspiring lawyer. Mrs. Carver at first engaged with abandon in the new social scene of Memphis but then retreated into pseudo-invalidism for the rest of her life. Mr. George Carver,however, wasn't through messing up their lives. First he managed to put a stop to Betsy's engagement to a promising young Nashville suitor. Then during WWII, he also bought off the woman that Phillip loved.  Neither of the older sisters ever married and Phillip's older brother was killed in the war. In this book, what becomes increasingly clear to Phillip during the course of the novel is just how manipulative his entire family has become, with revenge apparently the end goal of both the sisters if not also the father. What he does not seem to openly acknowledge is his retreat, not so much geographically, but emotionally from these large dramatic characters of his family into a small and monochromatic life. He calls it serenity.  Perhaps. A much more scholarly review of the book is available from the NYTimes.

Shakespeare's Counselor

This is the final installment in Charlaine Harris' "Lily Bard" series, which makes me sad as I really like this damaged but determined heroine. Lily was kidnapped, raped and tortured for days as a young woman and she has never really talked about it to anyone, at least not in a professional capacity. She has in fact tried very hard to keep anyone from knowing about this part of her past. She has moved to a small town, Shakespeare, Arkansas, where no one knows her story and started cleaning houses for a living. Eventually though the word has gotten out to some people, she has made a couple of friends, and even found a new love and husband, Jack. They have not told anyone yet that they are married. Jack has his own past problems he is trying to keep on the down low. But when Lily has a nightmare one night and attacks Jack thinking he is trying to hurt her, they both realize she needs to get some help. Lily soon thereafter sees a notice for a support group for rape victims at the local health center and it seems like a sign. She learns in the course of events that the counselor leading the group, Tamsin, has problems of her own--a stalker--which gets to be everyone's problem when a new group member ifs murdered and pinned to the wall of Tamsin's office on group therapy night. Lily and Jack get involved against their will, face a heart-rending event that brings them closer, and narrowly avoid becoming the subject of a new "true-crime" novel. Strong plot, continued development of characters, and good local color all add up to a fast-paced and enjoyable read. I have one other review of this series in my blog (Shakespeare's Trollop), but they are all good. The Lily Bard series is here.

Blood Orange Brewing

A totally fluffy book in Laura Childs' "Tea Shop Mysteries" series, as an antidote to reading The Goldfinch. I had read one other book in the series and love the descriptions of the city of Charleston, SC--the architecture and social customs in particular--as well as her lavish descriptions of tea and food. There are always several scrumptious sounding recipes included in the book, much like Diane Mott Davidson's books about caterer Goldy Schulz. In addition to running the Indigo Tea Shop, Theodosia Browning is also an amateur sleuth. She agrees to casually look into things when the husband of Pookie Wilkes is murdered at a candlelight concert to raise money for the Heritage Foundation. Theo stumbles into a secret room in the house where the murder happens, discovers the murder weapon came from the inventory of the Heritage Society, and show up on the scene of a second murder just minutes after the murderer has fled. Apparently someone thinks Theo is getting too close and they dognap her beloved Earl Grey, which only drives Theo to greater efforts to figure out what is going on. The bad guys are caught, Earl Grey is rescued, and lives return to normal.

A Secret Rage

Charlaine Harris is the author of the Sookie Stackhouse (vampire) series, as well as several others--not all of which include supernatural beings (e.g., Shakespeare series, Teagarden series). In this novel, fashion model Nickie  has just been told by her agent that she is past her prime at the tender age of 27. She decides to accept the invitation of  BFF, Mimi, to move home and share a big rambling house left by Mimi's grandmother. Knolls, TN has a small college and Nickie is going to finish her bachelor's degree and get her novels published. A series of rapes, which include Nickie's, quickly dispel the sense of homecoming and safety. When the rapes escalate to murder, no woman in town feels safe. Nickie and one of the other rape victims, a professor at the university decide to solve this mystery on their own and have narrowed the list down to just a handful of names--none of whom seem to be the kind of person who could commit such heinous crimes. Nickie's long-standing and unrequited crush on Mimi's older brother is realized and, of course, the women triumph in the end. Good characters, well-developed southern setting (a specialty of Harris'), and fast-moving and tension filled plot all make this a very readable book.

Oolong Dead

What a totally cosy little mystery, except set in Savannah instead of some quaint English village! This is #10 in Laura Childs' "Tea Shop Mystery Series"http://www.laurachilds.com/teashop.php and Theodosia Browning (yeah, I did think the name was a bit over the top) is suddenly thrown from her steeplechaser when he shies from a jump. The problem turns out to be a dead body--the body of someone Theodosia has had words with, and also the sister of her ex-fiance. Not only is Theo thrown from her horse, but she is also thrown for a loop when the local homicide detective subtly asks for her help in looking into who might have wanted newly promoted TV anchor Abby Davis dead. There are plenty of suspects, the has-been anchor man beat out by Abby, the jilted husband...To top it off, the next day Abby's brother Jory shows up and says the family wants Theo to investigate as well. Theo runs the Indigo Tea Shop in Savannah, hence the name of the series, and apparently has a knack for solving crimes. If this book is any indicator, the series is a total romp and I will look for more when I am in the mood for something light. Plus they have yummy recipes in the back. And this has aroused a powerful urge in me to visit Savannah!.