Customer Reviews

When Will the Dead Lady Sing?: A Thoroughly Southern Mystery

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the town of Hopemore, Georgia, MacLaren's day gets off to an unusual start when she sees a buffalo munching on the grass in the yard of her new house. By the time she finds the courage to go outside and get the animal away from her rose bushes, she has the second shock of the morning. Her college boyfriend Burlin Bullock, the one her husband Joe Ridley doesn't know about, is explaining to her that the buffalo is a symbol of his son's run for governor.

MacLaren would like to leave Hopemore for the week that the Bullocks are in town but business prevents her from doing so. She gets to see Burlin more than she would like. A homeless person who is following the Bullocks on the campaign trail is found murdered and circumstantial evidence points to a person that MacLaren knows is innocent and plans to prove it. The real killer, whom fears that MacLaren will figure out the truth, decides to kill her.

This down home regional mystery gives readers a sprinkle of small town deep south living, customs and mannerisms. The protagonist is a judge who does more to solve crimes than to render judgments on them. Patricia Sprinkle knows how to write a charming and quaint mystery without resorting to blood, gore or on stage violence of any kind. WHEN WILL THE DEAD LADY SING? is a great installment in a winning series.

Harriet Klausner

any story that opens with a buffalo in a suburban front yard has a lot going for it. sprinkle has a great way with a phrase, her characters are well drawn, there's good dialogue, but this otherwise decent mystery got three stars because the title gives away a major piece of the puzzle. and also because an important clue is actually waved in the reader's face.

i enjoyed the author's first series (_murder at buckhead_, and others) so i know the author has done better and will read at least one other title in this series in the hopes that it will be up to her previous standard.

This mystery series by Patricia Sprinkle is great! The book keeps ones interest from the first page. I think cozy mystery readers should definitely try this series. The book "When Will the Dead Lady Sing?" is number six in the series.

After a long day, you like to sit down sometimes and just read a fun book that doesn't require much brain power. Well this is one of those books. A delightful story with some fun characters, yet it had some powerful things to say about raising children and making allowances for the disabled as subtle messages within the book.

I've never lived in the south and so whenever I read a book that presents southerners in a certain way I wonder if it is true, as every cozy mystery I read presents them in the same way. The ladies fussing with their clothes, concerned about great grandma's china, and holding childhood grudges until their 90's, yet let a stranger come to town and they all band together. This book maintains all that, so it certainly won't disappoint, as the series is called a Thoroughly Southern Mystery.

If this is your kind of book, you will enjoy it. If you hate typical southern mysteries give it a pass and read something else as there are plenty of books yet in the world. I know I enjoyed at and was able to read it in one sitting if you don't count having to get up and make popcorn part way through!

As always I enjoyed this Patrica Sprinkle book. It is one of those books that is hard to put down and go to bed.

Hopemore magistrate, MacLauren Yarbrough, wakes up to find a buffalo in her yard and her biggest secret hiding behind a tree. But the surprises aren't over, and when she finds a dead body under the town's water tower, MacLauren gets caught in an investigation that threatens the serenity of Hopemore, the state's political landscape, and her treasured marriage to the only man she ever loved.

Patricia Sprinkle's chatty approach to storytelling and her vivid, southern descriptions gives a new meaning to the phrase cozy mystery. This book is delightfully charming, and just the beginning of what is now my interest in Ms. Sprinkle's novels.