Crossed Bones (Sarah Booth Delaney Series #4) » (Reprint)

Mississippi native Carolyn Haines, a former photojournalist, has written numerous books and was recently honored with an Alabama State Council on the Arts literary fellowship. She now lives in southern Alabama with her horses, dogs, and cats, including the real-life Sweetie Pie, where she is hard at work on the next Sarah Booth Delaney mystery, Hallowed Bones. Crossed Bones is her fourth mystery for Bantam Dell.

In rich, atmospheric mysteries set against the backdrop of modern-day Mississippi, Carolyn Haines has given the southern belle a brilliantly hip makeover. Now Haines and her unforgettable heroine, Sarah Booth Delaney, are back with a tale about skeletons in closets--and elsewhere.

Publishers Weekly

The Mississippi delta in the summer heat is not all that's steaming in Haines's (Splintered Bones, etc.) fourth outing featuring PI Sarah Booth Delaney, an atypical Southern belle who's fiercely independent and outrageously witty. Sarah is enjoying her family home, a mansion in Zinnia, Miss., complete with cotton fields, coral honeysuckle vines and the ghost of Jitty, her great-great-grandmother's nanny. When nightclub owner and black blues pianist Ivory Keys is stabbed to death at his club, Ivory's wife asks Sarah to vindicate the prime suspect, Scott Hampton, a talented white blues guitarist with a history of racism. Aided by her partner Tinkie Richmond, Sarah inadvertently stirs up passions among the townspeople that were long thought forgotten. Jitty's continual lectures on marriage and family and Sarah's mixed feelings about Sheriff Coleman Peters and two new suitors complicate the investigation. While the ghostly Jitty's advice can be wearying and the clothing details verge on the tedious, Haines delivers some real heartwarming moments in a mystery with some fascinating twists. This cozy read is the next best thing to curling up with a mint julep on the porch swing on a lazy afternoon. Agent, Marian Young. (Apr. 8) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.