Digging Up the Dirt

Southern Ladies Mysteries, Book 3

By: Miranda James

Narrated by: Emily Sutton-Smith

The New York Times bestselling author of the Cat in the Stacks mysteries is back with more of those sleuthing Southern belles, the Ducote sisters . . .

An'gel and Dickce Ducote, busy with plans for the Athena Garden Club's spring tour of grand old homes, are having trouble getting the other club members to help. The rest of the group is all a-flutter now that dashing and still-eligible Hadley Partridge is back to restore his family mansion. But the idle chatter soon turns deadly serious when a body turns up on the Partridge estate after a storm . . .

The remains might belong to Hadley's long-lost sister-in-law, Callie, who everyone thought ran off with Hadley years ago. And if it's not Callie, who could it be? As the Ducotes begin uncovering secrets, they discover that more than one person in Athena would kill to be Mrs. Partridge. Now An'gel and Dickce will need to get their hands dirty if they hope to reveal a killer's deep-buried motives before someone else's name is mud . . .

©2016 Dean James (P)2024 Tantor

Weak and Slow-Moving

This 3rd book of the series was a disappointment. Endless chapters that go nowhere. If you read this series you already know how far-fetched it is. Women in their 80’s running around doing the things these women do isn’t very believable, but we accept that because it has a warm and cozy vibe, the characters are so likable, and usually we can puzzle out the mystery. This one was just different because they spent more time visiting around and having tea, treating their 20 year old “ward” as if he’s a child instead of a young man getting ready for college, and then everything came down to the last 15 minutes of the book in an ending that was just “meh.” No loss if you skip this one.