Cathy Pickens

Based on cover photo and "Southern Fried Title" I expected a very light "foodie" cozy; (no cherry pie mentioned in the story...) but it is really a nice basic mystery, more of a Grisham-light story, with a serious trial going on, with a concerning medical malpractice background. Would like to have met the two dead characters before they died, as they appeared to have been worthy of more development and their loss more meaningful. The humor from the savvy cabdriver and the "mental" patients show more who save the day goes beyond typical "cozy" silliness. I liked the story ! show less

I'm really glad to have been lead to this series, even if I did start with the newest book instead of the first. I've enjoyed reading them so much that I've had to force myself to stop reading them to go to bed or work and I now regret not taking at least the next one out from the library so I could get started reading it right now.

In this introduction to the series, the characters and town felt just as natural as the last installment instead of forced as many first books in a series show more can.
Which makes it even more impressive that this is in fact her first book.

With one exception the people of this town feel real and fleshed out, and she captures the feel of a small town and what it might be like to come home wonderfully. The only exception is when she tries to demonstrate one of the deputies Southern accent in typed form, it just feels force and makes him more of a caricature. At some point she stops that though, since he wasn't like that in the newest book.

The actual mysteries and surrounding story lines were handled quite well, though I did find some of them a bit convenient in the end. But the endings all made such good sense and felt right that I don't even consider that a sticking point.

And again as in the first one I read, I appreciated that the mysteries didn't get solved solely by our intrepid investigator but progressed naturally and made sense. show less

I enjoyed this one WAY more than the second. It was fun to be back in Dacus, the whole feel of the stories there are just different than the one she based in Charleston.

I like how naturally she makes the overlapping and at first unrelated mysteries seem to merge and grow naturally, so far they have never really felt forced. And I love how she includes storylines that have nothing to do with the main mystery as well.

It's also been a real pleasure to have an inside look into a character as she show more grows, changes and makes realizations about herself, her family and what and who she wants to be.
This also feels so organic and natural, like watching a real person grow and unfold vs. a created character. And I LOVE her family.

My one quibble is one that I find common in most mysteries. When seemingly intelligent people behave in stupid ways.
When faced with a possible personal threat to herself and others, a threat she recognized and knew could be serious....she goes to the realateors office to look for a place to live or on other errands that really didn't have to be done just quite at that time. Putting things off till the end when it was more convenient for the storyline. I hate it when authors do that.

But that is my only quibble about this book, which overall isn't to bad.

This series has been one of my luckiest finds and I am so grateful to the librarian who directed me to them. show less

This was a fun book. I usually find the themed mystery series trite and hard to get into but in this one the characters felt real and fleshed out...though that could be becuase I started a few books into the series...

I found both mysteries running through the book interesting and fairly realistic and I was glad that there was no attempt to blend the two together and I thought the brief glimpse of Carnie life was well done and just enough for the feel of the book.

I also REALLY liked how the show more ending made sense and was logical and actually involved the police vs the female lead 't magically turning into Super Investigator and doing it all herself which I've seen all to often and wouldn't have worked with the character as written so I was very happy to see she went with the realistic approach.

I found the characters and the town very enjoyable and am looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Only I'm going to go back to the first one now. show less