To Live and Die in Dixie

Former Atlanta police officer Callaghan Garrity runs The House Mouse, a professional maid service, and also dabbles in private investigation. A new client has an emergency need for a thorough cleaning; Elliot Littlefield owns Eagle’s Keep, one of Atlanta’s most elegant old mansions and his housekeeper has quit the day before a major party. The team arrives to complete disarray, and discovers a body in an upstairs bedroom. But this isn’t the first time a young woman has met her death at Eagle’s Keep…

This is a fast-paced, well-plotted cozy mystery. I like Callaghan – she’s intelligent, resourceful, strong, and professional. Some of her crew members are a little too eccentric to be believable, but it’s all in good fun. I show more did figure out the murderer the minute that character was introduced, but that was okay because I still liked watching how Trochek developed the plot. show less

it's an interesting experience, reading mysteries set in 1992/ish. This book and the previous one both brush upon the idea of racism, but they do so from a time and place that is alien to me, and I think less concerned with equality than now. likewise, this book's subplot deals with a girl who has bulimia, but seems to assume less familiarity with the topic than I think people have now.

Entertaining and Southern as the Callahan mother-daughter team – returns full of mischief and humor as her cleaning crew (turned detective) is on the trail of a stolen Civil War diary. With collectors, radicals, teens, southern belles, shabby developers, and crimes to solve. Did not enjoy this one as much as the others in the series as a light mystery and listened to audio --Huber, the narrator is always good for a laugh.

I listened to this book because I wanted to do some crafts and hear an entertaining story. In the past I have found this author delivers on the entertainment. Her writing is full of humor. I really enjoyed the characters in this story. The tone of the story was smooth so it flowed from one situation to another. I did not agree with all the cuss words in the story or the summary ending of the story.

Julia Callahan Garrity is a former policewoman, now the owner
of a cleaning service called House Mouse, and a part time private detective.
She lives with her rather caustic, chain-smoking mother, Edna, and has a
motley bunch of employees she sends out in the crisply starched bright pink
House Mouse smocks, armed with cleaning supplies to keep Atlanta clean.

When the girls are hired to do a major cleaning of one of the old Victorian
mansions known as Eagle's Keep, they have only 6 hours to scrub the three
story filthy antique filled place before the owner hosts a hoity-toity
party. Elliot Littlefield was tried and convicted of murder over 20 years
ago and got out of it when his conviction was overturned on a technicality.
He's back in show more Atlanta, running a very lucrative antique business at Eagle's
Keep and disgusting his neighbors on a regular basis. While Callahan views
her new employer with distaste, his money spends the same as everybody
else's so she agrees to take the job. When the cleaning crew discover the
bloody body of a teenaged girl on the third floor, all bets are off and the
party is cancelled. But Littlefield has a good alibi and claims there has
also been a burglary with numerous Civil War pieces, including the priceless
diary of an Atlanta wartime whore. He hires Callahan to find those missing
items and it isn't very long before she is in way over her head show less

Fun, enjoyable audiobook by Mary Kay Andrews.

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