This author creates a great sense of life in the Miss. Delta

books:


	• Buried Bones Carolyn Haines Bantam, 2000 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

READ IT IN ONE DAY

Carolyn Haines can write! I loved the characters and the story was part charming, part thrilling. I couldn't put it down.

Excellent Series!!

Excellent Series! I love reading about the deep south, Sarah Delaney and all her friends.. always on pins and needles to see if she and the Sheriff are ever going to get together!!

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This author creates a great sense of life in the Miss. Delta

This book is in the category of "mysteries with literary merit" -- it's well-written, with lively, vivid characters and realistic dialogue, in addition to a good mystery plot. I would actually give it 4 1/2 stars if that were an option. The plot is just a little bit too tangled and complex, and it reminded me a little bit too much of the previous book in the series (scandals from the past causing problems in the present).

The plot involves a once-famous all-around artist-celebrity who is writing a tell-all book. Needless to say, he quickly ends up dead. Who killed him, and why? The motive is obvious -- he was about to reveal something that someone wanted to remain hidden -- but there are a lot of secrets about a lot of people likely to come out if this book is published, so the list of suspects is rather long, and the motive seems to lie in something that happened in 1940. Sarah Booth Delaney, former Southern upper class girl with a long pedigree and now impoverished orphan turned private investigator (of financial necessity), sets about trying to find out who the killer is -- and it may be someone she knows well and trusts.

This is the third book by Haines that I'm reading -- she makes me want to go visit the Mississippi Delta (where this series is set). I almost except to find Sarah Booth Delaney, the ghost Jitty, and the old plantation Dahlia House waiting for me -- not to mention a hound dog on the porch.

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Better than the first in the series

The writer continues to show promise. The story is more involved and amusing than the original book in the series. The ghost, Jitty, continues to be annoying. She reminds me of the annoying creature in the Star Wars recent movies. I like the character of Tinkie but can't say I am feeling too drawn to the main character, Sarah Booth Delaney. I have bought the other books in the series in hopes that the writer continues to improve. Plot development is still very weak.

Less Sarah Booth More Lawrence Ambrose

Lawrence Ambrose is a writer and supporter of the arts who, on the eve of having his "tell all" published, pledges it will divulge the innermost secrets of various people he knows/has known. Of course, the morning after making this dinner party announcement, he if found murdered...

The storyline is an interesting one and the book possesses literary merit; however, I would have liked more on Mr. Ambrose's character (and his life) and a little less on Sarah Booth's daily thoughts and meanderings--I mean how fascinated can one character be with the color of people's eyes (and they're all blue)? How many times and ways can the reader be told that S.B. is a fallen-from-grace, once wealthy daddy's girl/deb who is now having to make her own way? And that ubiquitous Jitty "character", who does nothing to advance the storyline, definitely needs a rest. She exists solely, I guess, to serve as comic relief and foil to Saran Booth.

The other townspeople in this small Mississippi enclave are, for the most part, fairly interesting and we get to know several of them pretty well. This is the second book in the series I have read and despite my mumblings and grumblings above, I will read another. Ms. Haines is a gifted writer--of that there is no doubt. However, it is difficult not to get the impression she--how can I put this--"dumbs down" her talent to appeal to a wider based audience.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Private investigation isn't on the list of a southern belle's most desirable accomplishments--but it's saved Sarah Booth Delaney's Delta homestead. Now all she has to cope with is its bossy antebellum ghost who is determined to save Sarah--from spinsterhood. Then comes the perfect social occasion: Lawrence Ambrose's dinner party...

Buried Bones

Ambrose, once a famous man of southern letters, is planning a comeback: a delicious tell-all with a bitchy ex-model as his "biographer." As he taunts his dinner guests with the news that his book will blow the lid off Zinnia's darkest secrets, it becomes plain that each and every guest has a secret--and wants Ambrose to keep it. When the morning-after mess includes a bloody corpse and the manuscript of the biography disappears, Sarah Booth goes digging for answers. But many who hold them are six feet under--or soon will be--and if she doesn't tread carefully, she could join them any day now...

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