plot includes lyrics to Appalachian ballad

I do not believe this is from one of Sharyn McCrumb's ballad novels, but it could be from My Old True Love by Sheila Kay Adams (or not), if someone has read that more recently than I have.

I only remember this subplot, so I have no context. It was from a novel and I read it within the last, say, five years, but I don't know whether the book was new at the time or not. It could have been historical fiction or a mystery.

What I remember is this: There is a new ballad being sung and a girl (teenager?) knows different lyrics to the song than the general public does, and it turns out it's because she knows the murderer in the song (I believe he's a male relative of hers). The song is about a woman who was strangled (?) but the girl mentions blood on the victim's dress, which is something only the perpetrator and the sheriff would know, and the sheriff is not the bad guy. I don't remember whether this leads to the mystery being solved or not.

This may have been a whopping couple of paragraphs in a larger novel, but it's all I remember.

One of the ballad novels by Sharyn McCrumb fits this description, The Songcatcher. A girl sings the song with the lyrics "red-stained petticoat" instead of "red-striped petticoat" which leads to the killer who is the only person who would know the petticoat was red-stained. The book is a fictional account of the origins of a folk song and how it was passed down through generations of a family. This is one of my favorite books by this author.

Thank you! I'll re-read The Songcatcher, then. I read it in 2009, not recently enough to know if it was the right book. My sense was that it was more historical fiction, but then McCrumb's books have headed that way over the series, haven't they?

Yes they have, and I have to admit I really miss the style of the earlier McCrumb books. I did like The Songcatcher, but I just haven't enjoyed the recent ones as much.