MURDER GETS A LIFE

Those Alabama sisters—Mary Alice (Sister) Crane, unattached after three marriages, and Patricia Anne (Mouse) Hollowell, happily married to Fred—are again involved in murder and misery, this time very close to home (Murder Makes Waves, etc.). Sister’s son Ray, who leads diving expeditions off his boat in Bora Bora, has married Sunshine Dabbs, of the Turkett clan in Locust Fork, not far from his mother’s home. Sunshine won the trip to Bora Bora on Wheel of Fortune and has now returned home, soon to be followed by Ray and his boat co-worker Buck Owens. The sisters, sneakily checking out Sunshine’s background, find her family’s encampment of trailers and, in the one belonging to Grandma Meemaw, stumble over the body of a man stabbed to death. Meanwhile, Sunshine has vanished, leaving behind a bloody nightgown. The corpse is of one Dudley Cross, who dressed up as an Indian chief and cadged change at the entrance to Crystal Caverns. Sunshine’s mother Kerrigan is a porn star; her grandfather Pawpaw has his own trailer, as do her brothers Howard and Eddie. While a heat wave sizzles and Sheriff Reuse flounders about, there’s a phone call from Sunshine, followed by occasional sightings. Not until the sisters are kidnaped does a powerful murder motive surface, and their mettle is once again tested to the max. The plot rambles off-focus for much of the time and limps to its less-than-riveting conclusion, but characters and conversation are the thing here, and the author manages to keep both robustly entertaining. Fresh and funny.