All you fans of Bell's six cozies about small-town Texan Biggie Weatherford and her 12-year-old grandson, J.R. (Biggie and the Meddlesome Mailman, etc.), should saunter on down to Post Oak, Tex., and meet Judge Jackson Crain and his 13-year-old daughter, Patty. The judge's beloved wife has been dead for two years, and the ladies of the town, particularly Dora, his shrewish sister-in-law, are determined to find him a nice, motherly replacement. Dora's henpecked husband, Ron, has found consolation in the arms of Muriel, the waitress at a popular restaurant. The day after Dora ridicules Ron's request for a divorce, she turns up dead on the patio. Whom would you suspect? Meanwhile, in the mansion on the hill, the elderly couple purported to be the town's wealthiest citizens are being plagued by noisy intruders in the attic and mysterious fires in the living room. Then a farmer's son stumbles across a pretty girl, naked and dead in his field. Everyone expects Jackson to sort it all out, but he's having serious distractions of his own in the form of an exotic newcomer with whom he's fallen hopelessly in love. Bell's plot sprawls like its location, but it all comes together in a most unexpected and gratifying conclusion. (Mar. 12)
