Sunday, August 5, 2012

Elvis and the Dearly Departed

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If you are always delighted to find a new series of zany, chick lit "cozy mysteries" then your face should be sporting a wide grin right about now. If you find it more interesting when those stories are set in the Deep South, then this is your lucky day indeed. Goodreads describes this series as "Fried Green Tomatoes meets Stephanie Plum." A screwball comedy that you shuld just dive into and enjoy rolling your eyes at the bad Southern parodies or shaking your head at the quirky characters without trying to be anything other than entertained. I was entertained. I have however noticed in the reviews that this is definitely one of those stories/series that you either outright love or you throw the book across the room in disgust thus the middle-of-the-road rating of 3.5 stars on Amazon. Lots of 5 star and a few 1 star reviews. Although I got a little exasperated with parts of the book, how could you not love a storyline that includes narrative from a flop-eared Basset named Elvis?

From Amazon.com's description:  

They say you can't get to Heaven without passing through the Eternal Rest Funeral Home. And no one gets into Eternal Rest without passing muster with Elvis--the basset hound who's convinced he's the reincarnation of the King of Rock 'n' Roll. Brewing up a big ol' pitcher of Mississippi mystery, Peggy Webb's delightful new series is as intoxicating as the Delta breeze.

Normally, Callie Valentine Jones spends her days fixing up the hairdos of the dead, but when the corpse of local, prominent physician Dr. Leonard Laton goes missing, it's bad for business. So Callie and her cousin Lovie (Eternal Rest's resident wake caterer) have no choice but to go in hot pursuit of the recently embalmed, last seen bound for Vegas by way of downtown Tupelo. In Vegas, Callie and Lovie hit the jackpot when they find the dearly departed inside a freezer owned by his showgirl mistress, Bubble Malone. But their luck runs out when Bubble decides to join her man in the afterlife. With the poisonous Laton family tree providing plenty of rotten suspects, Callie, along with some help from her basset hound, Elvis, is determined to crack this case--and have a killer singing "Jailhouse Rock" in time for her next haircutting appointment. . .

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