The first in the Callie Parrish series, this was a great cozy mystery. It was fast-paced from the first page. Callie is a true southern gal, who loves to shop at Victoria's Secret and eat at Bojangles. She works as a mortuary cosmetologist and enjoys her job a lot. One of the bodies that comes into the funeral home causes a whole lot of trouble though, which leads to a stolen casket, two fighting wives, and Callie finds herself on the receiving end of threatening phone calls and even gets knocked out in the parking lot. Being a mystery lover herself, she can't help but try to figure out who's behind all the trouble, even if it makes her the next target. I look forward to the next book in this series. ( )

This is a great new addition for fans of cozy mysteries. Calamine Lotion Parrish is a mortuary cosmetologist and a very likeable and fully drawn protagonist. I loved getting to know Callie and her family and best friend Jane, a blind woman who works nights as Roxanne on a sex phone line. You will learn far more than you ever wanted to know about the funeral business. Highly enjoyable. ( )

Calamine Parrish used to have the hardest job in the world --
kindergarten teacher -- but after a few years of trying to deal with all
those wiggly, giggly, squealy children, she quit and took a job as
mortuary cosmetologist at the local funeral home. But when she finds a
hypodermic needle broken off in the neck of an apparent drowning victim
things start getting interesting. And when his fancy mahogany coffin is
stolen from the back room a few minutes after Callie is knocked on the
head at the back door, Callie realizes that she seems to be in the way
of a cold blooded killer.

Ok, I tried to enjoy this book and I have to say that the plot was
beginning to get pretty good, the characters were certainly interesting,
and the feel of the town was all right, I finally had to give it up
after 115 pages. Reason? This book was written in the first person,
which is fine, but the auther used words like "puh-leeze" and
'buh-leeve" each and every time "please" or "believe" was used, and not
just in dialog, either. I could have stood just about anything if it
took place in dialog, but this was in the actual text of the story.

Enough. DNF. ( )

Not the great cozy I expected it to be. The title was perhaps the best thing about this book for it was rather slow moving, uninteresting and flat. I didn't even bother to finish reading this having lost all interest in the characters lives about halfway through. ( )