 |
- Mystery - |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Death and the Hubcap |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Death and the Hubcap by Linda Berry Write Way Publishing 247 pages, September 2000 ISBN 188517375X Reviewed by Diane Gotfryd Read another review by PJ Nunn In my mind I picture Ogeechee, Georgia as a small, tidy town buried in green walls of kudzu, maybe visible only from a helicopter, the way a properly planted marijuana field might be. I still have this picture in my mind, several days after reading Death and the Hubcap because Berry has written a fine, chatty mystery set in this sleepy small locale. This is the second book in Berry’s series, the first being Death and the Easter Bunny. Her protagonist is 30-something Trudy Roundtree, who has become a policewoman because she needed a job and her cousin is the chief of police. This is just one of the many refreshing moments in Berry’s book, filled with Southern plain-speaking, and many nice people all trying to figure out how a dead man got that way. Was he hit by a car before or after he died - or both? Accident or murder? In a big city, this death would remain a skinny manila file in a deep desk drawer, but in sleepy Ogeechee, it takes over life in general. The author gives us some nice insight into Trudy without revealing too much, although she explains maybe more than she has to about what Trudy’s been doing, or not doing, with boyfriend Phil over the past year. The plot is the weakest point but not so weak you need to put the book down. The idea that a fiber would remain on a vehicle grill over a period of months, presumably even after being washed, is something the author hopes we’ll go along with. That aside, the book has great pace, with setting, characters and dialogue all in sync. Fans of Margaret Maron’s books featuring southern judge Deborah Knott will like Trudy Roundtree as well. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||