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Buried Bones |
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 Buried Bones byCarolyn Haines Bantam Books ISBN 0553581724 368 pages, November 2000 Reviewed by Susan McBride Read our review of Them Bones In her sequel to last year's well-received Them Bones, nominated for a Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Best First Mystery, Carolyn Haines exposes plenty of family skeletons in Buried Bones. In fact, in Zinnia, Mississippi the home of debutante-turned-sleuth Sarah Booth Delaney, there isn't a soul in town who isn't hiding something. And someone it seems wants to guard those secrets desperately enough to kill. Famed writer and Zinnia expatriate Lawrence Ambrose has returned from Paris to promote his autobiography, which will ostensibly spill the dirt on every prominent resident in the tiny Southern burg, and a few well-known outsiders as well. When the cast of characters gathers at Ambrose's cottage for a celebration, the only topic of conversation is the contents of the tell-all as the guests all wonder which of them will be dragged through the mud. So it's no surprise when Lawrence Ambrose turns up dead the next day, lying in a pool of blood, apparently from a tiny cut on his hand. Sarah Booth isn't one to let sleeping dogs lie, not since she got into the detecting business on a lark. Besides, Ambrose was a friend of her parents, and she's got more than an itchy feeling that the death was no accident. But who wanted to hush up Ambrose permanently? And where is the missing manuscript? Using as much Southern charm as a Daddy's Girl can muster, Sarah Booth goes on a hunt for the killer, and this time she's got a hound dog named Sweetie Pie as a sidekick. Like in Them Bones, she sometimes gets her heart confused with common sense, but she's no dumb belle. Digging into the past is what Buried Bones is all about, and Sarah Booth knows just where to look. Though I got tired of hearing about the Delaney womb, I was otherwise entertained by Buried Bones. There are plenty of twists in the plot to keep mystery fans engaged. Yet the magic of this book lies in the author's depiction of a modern-day Scarlett O'Hara stuck in an often time-warped town in the Delta. And like every good Southern family, the Delaney's homestead Dahlia House has its own ghost named Jitty. All in all, a fun read, no bones about it. |
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