WHIPPED CREAM AND PIANO WIRE

A Georgia lawyer takes on a dangerous case involving a close friend in Simpson’s whodunit.

The title of this novel comes from the definition of Southern belle that protagonist Ann Audrey Pickering’s mother had, which stressed such women’s inner toughness: “whipped cream on top of piano wire.” But as this story begins, Ann Audrey feels anything but formidable. The setting is Atlanta in the late 1990s, when the city was experiencing an increase in population. But Ann Audrey herself has withdrawn from the world and from her law practice. She’s still recovering after the press circus that erupted when she worked with the FBI and testified against her now-ex-husband, Charlie, who swindled numerous people; even now, she looks around “out of habit, to make sure none of Charlie’s victims who might recognize me” are in her immediate vicinity. She’s currently living in seclusion, taking time to read the New York Times, and going for runs along the Chattahoochee River. She’s often visited by her old friend Theo Humphries, a free-spirited woman (“Wives who disregarded Theo were taking a risk,” Ann narrates. “Theo likes men, and they like her”). Theo’s seeing a married real estate developer named Cutler Mead who’s separated from his wife, and one evening, she calls Ann Audrey in a panic after finding Cutler dead on the floor of his study. Reluctantly, Ann Audrey is drawn back into the world to investigate the murder and save her friend, whom she’s sure is innocent.

Simpson wastes no time in putting her readers straight into the story; she sends Ann Audrey off to the scene of the crime, where she encounters handsome police detective Mike Bristol, who wears a fedora to signal his membership in “the elite Atlanta homicide squad whose members were presented a hat when they solved their first murder.” He’s on the case and naturally suspects Theo. What unfolds is an adroit whodunit that’s lightly threaded through with the burgeoning attraction between Ann Audrey and Mike, whose physical charms Simpson describes in detail (“His eyes were deep blue, not that pale Land-of-the-Midnight-Sun Scandinavian blue, but dark”). The author lays out Ann Audrey’s methodical investigation of the increasingly complicated backgrounds of Cutler and his group of friends, who served in Vietnam together and appear to have secrets that go back a long way. Indeed, readers will find that many of the people around Cutler seem to have had a plausible motive for the murder; even Theo’s late husband had dealings with the deceased. The characters are all well fleshed out, including Ann Audrey’s friend and mainstay Flynn Reynolds, whose unobtrusive bravery is memorably drawn by Simpson; at one point, she describes his demeanor as “cool and collected, an impenetrable façade worn by a gay man in a homophobic society.” Near the end of the novel, when Ann Audrey professes her desire to go back to her “quiet life in [her] nice, cool air-conditioned condo,” readers will be eager for her peace and quiet to be broken with a new case.

An inviting beginning to a new Atlanta-based mystery series.