Crossed Bones
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4.4 • 55 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Sarah Booth Delaney uncovers skeletons in closets—and elsewhere—as she attempts to solve a murder that threatens to tear her beloved town in half.
“This cozy read is the next best thing to curling up with a mint julep on the porch swing on a lazy afternoon.”—Publishers Weekly
A born-and-bred Mississippi belle, Sarah Booth Delaney is no ordinary P.I. And this was no ordinary murder. The dead man was Ivory Keys, a gifted Black pianist—and his murder has sparked the kind of racial divide Zinnia, Mississippi, hasn’t seen since the Civil War. After all, the prime suspect is Keys’s protégé, Scott Hampton, a white rich boy turned racist—and Sarah Booth has been hired to prove he didn’t do it by no less than the victim’s widow.
For a woman feeling a little heat of her own—navigating between a rich, available businessman, a married lawman with a waffling heart, and the sexy bluesman who is angling to become much more than her client—this case is taking some dangerous twists. A town’s slumbering passions have been awakened with a jolt, a matchmaking ghost is eyeing some promising suitors, and Sarah Booth is caught between her need to know the truth and the consequences it will have on her town—and on her life. . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Mississippi delta in the summer heat is not all that's steaming in Haines's (Splintered Bones, etc.) fourth outing featuring PI Sarah Booth Delaney, an atypical Southern belle who's fiercely independent and outrageously witty. Sarah is enjoying her family home, a mansion in Zinnia, Miss., complete with cotton fields, coral honeysuckle vines and the ghost of Jitty, her great-great-grandmother's nanny. When nightclub owner and black blues pianist Ivory Keys is stabbed to death at his club, Ivory's wife asks Sarah to vindicate the prime suspect, Scott Hampton, a talented white blues guitarist with a history of racism. Aided by her partner Tinkie Richmond, Sarah inadvertently stirs up passions among the townspeople that were long thought forgotten. Jitty's continual lectures on marriage and family and Sarah's mixed feelings about Sheriff Coleman Peters and two new suitors complicate the investigation. While the ghostly Jitty's advice can be wearying and the clothing details verge on the tedious, Haines delivers some real heartwarming moments in a mystery with some fascinating twists. This cozy read is the next best thing to curling up with a mint julep on the porch swing on a lazy afternoon. is 0-7862-4318-X.
