Peggy Webb

Book number one in the “Southern Cousins” mystery series is a bust.

Elvis is a basset hound owned by Callie Valentine Jones. Well, she and her soon-to-be ex are fighting over custody of Elvis. Callie is a beautician whose claim to fame is preparing the recently deceased for the family viewing at her uncle’s funeral parlor in Tupelo, Mississippi. But when the corpse of a prominent physician goes missing, Callie and her cousin Lovie (who is the funeral parlor’s caterer) head to Las Vegas to retrieve the body. The chief suspect is the doctor’s mistress, Bubble Malone, a Vegas showgirl. Needless to say, the road trip doesn’t go as planned and the cousins hightail it back to Tupelo.

I like a cute and sassy cozy mystery as well as the any reader. I love eccentric characters and outlandish plots. But I DO expect at least a semblance of a coherent plot. And at least SOME law enforcement involvement. In this case, I think the author was trying way too hard to make this “cute” and “sassy” and failed to deliver any plot worth remembering.

I would rather have had more info about Elvis’s assignation with the cute French Poodle in heat. (But he’s too much of a Southern gentleman to kiss and tell.)

Feel free to skip this one.… (mere)

The jacket blurb made it sound like this would be good, but I ended up feeling like I ate something sickly sweet. This white woman is grieving over her husband's death so she takes on a 'project' of helping a dying Black woman, Betty Jewell. They become friends & she learns Betty Jewell has a child by the white woman's husband. The whole situation seems artificial.
Part of the story is told by the dying woman's daughter, Billie, who is afraid of her mother's pending death. She is tough, and has her hopes on being rescued by her mother's ex-husband. The book's end glosses over Billie's pain & makes us believe she will grow up happy and secure.
Another part I hate is that the only way Betty Jewell can save her daughter from her ex-husband's grasp is by cutting him down, dissing him. OK, I get that he has a history of lying to her, and of drug addiction. But he's been out of touch for >10 years and is now trying to do better. Couldn't she have just told him the truth about who Billie's father was? How come he didn't figure it out as soon as he saw her?… (mere)