Bless Your Heart
A Thriller
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Motherhood and murder link five very different women when a working-class detective clashes with wealthy moms in this upmarket thriller in the vein of May Cobb and Jeneva Rose.
Anderson Tupper, a member of one of Atlanta’s richest families, has been murdered in the dugout of the Little League field where he was a volunteer coach, and it’s up to Detective Shay Claypool, a single mother from the other side of town, to find his killer.
With the exclusive area of Buckhead threatening to secede from the city of Atlanta and take its tax revenue with it, Shay is under pressure to solve the murder of one of Buckhead’s own. Accustomed to handling drug dealers and prostitutes, she must now contend with an even more sinister group: the Buckhead Betties, the insufferably entitled women of Georgia’s most affluent zip code. One of them might be a murderer, but who? Is it the old-money queen of Buckhead? The mysterious new girl in town? The drug-dealing trophy wife?
It seems secrets and lies are as plentiful as luxury handbags in Atlanta and everyone’s guilty of something. Shay’s investigation will make her examine her own prejudices and discover that, as a woman and a mother, she might not be that different from the Betties after all. And if she isn’t careful, they just might take her down with them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Cinderella Story screenwriter Dunlap debuts with a dishy tale of death and betrayal in the Deep South. In the wealthy Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, Ga., wolfishly charming youth baseball coach and financial adviser Anderson Tupper is found beaten to death in a dugout. Homicide detective LaShay Claypool takes the case, but her efforts are immediately stonewalled by the "Buckhead Betties": cutthroat baseball moms who seem intent on scrambling the detective's signals. Among them are lawyer Venita Wiley, femme fatale Sutton Chambers, and YA author Kira Brooks. Gradually, Claypool peels back Buckhead's many layers, revealing that Anderson mismanaged both his own fortune and the assets of others before his death, that each member of his team had a complicated home life, and that tragedy lies just beneath the surface of the most fearsome Betties' glittering lives. Dunlap's gleefully exaggerated characters are a little bit Desperate Housewives, a little bit Jacqueline Susann, and the delicious whiff of camp carries Claypool's investigation through to its truly surprising conclusion. This is a hoot.
