cover image Murder Runs in the Family: A Southern Sisters Mystery

Murder Runs in the Family: A Southern Sisters Mystery

Anne Carroll George. Avon Books, $7.99 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-380-78449-3

Retired Alabama schoolteacher Patricia Anne Hollowell and her sister Mary Alice (heroines of Murder on a Girls' Night Out and Murder on a Bad Hair Day) befriend genealogist Meg Ryan at the wedding of Mary Alice's daughter. Afterward, inexplicably, Meg commits suicide by jumping out of the courthouse window, an event witnessed by a judge. It's all too much for Patricia Anne and Mary Alice, and once again they are drawn into playing amateur sleuths. Along the way, the sisters find out that the sweet elderly lady was not above tampering with courthouse records, and perhaps even worse. With wonderful dialogue and descriptions of the guests, the opening wedding scene is truly entertaining, but then the plot spins out of control. The book remains a clever first half of a mystery that unfortunately doesn't hold up. (June)