Lady of Bones: A Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery (Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery, #24)

by Carolyn Haines

It's Halloween season in Mississippi as Sarah Booth and the gang gather to decorate and gush over Tinkie's new baby, Maylin. Sarah Booth is just about to refresh the cocktails when she hears a knock on the door and opens it to find a woman named Frankie, distraught at the disappearance of her daughter Christa, a young journalist. Christa had been investigating the disappearance of young women in New Orleans over a five-year period-one every year around Halloween. Now Christa herself is missing, and Frankie fears it may be connected to a cult based in the Garden District, called People of Eternity.

People of Eternity are known to have far-reaching connections which Frankie worries may reach as high as law enforcement. Refusing to contact the authorities, she turns to Delaney Detective Agency as her only hope.

Despite initial reservations, Sarah Booth accepts the case, which takes her on a journey to a secret underworld of beguiling cult leaders, witchcraft, and potentially human sacrifice. She'll have to keep her wits about her if she wants to crack this case.and make it home alive.

• ISBN10: 1250833728
• ISBN13: 9781250833723
• Publish Date: 14 June 2022
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

Lady of Bones is the 24th Sarah Booth Delaney cozy mystery by Carolyn Haines. Released 14th June 2022 by Macmillan on their Minotaur imprint, it's 352 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. 

This is an entertaining and engaging book in an engaging series by a competent writer. There's a strong paranormal element (the main character's sort of haunted by her great-great grandmother's nanny, a black woman named Jitty who has Opinions and lots of confusingly cryptic advice). MC Sarah Booth Delaney's also a PI and this installment sees her getting to the bottom of a string of Hallowe'en disappearances over the last 5 years of young women in the New Orleans area. She's soon entangled in cults with charismatic leaders, witchcraft, and possibly even human sacrifice. The settings are a living, breathing, immersive part of the story and the author does a superlative job with them.

The plotting is often meandering (it's a cozy with almost 400 pages), and there's quite a lot of "fluff" to add humor including a generous helping of cooing over best friend Tinkie's new baby, Maylin. The characters are quirky and appealing and there's a lot of goodwill and heart in the series. Ms. Haines is quite an adept author and I never found my interest waning, although there were a few eye-rollingly silly moments. The denouement and resolution weren't overly surprising, but they were satisfying. This series is dependably entertaining and fun, and this one is worth a read. The ensemble cast and returning characters mean that readers who are new to the story might want to read a few in the series prior to this one first, although it's simple enough to probably work well enough as a standalone. There are dogs, some cats, the language is clean, and there's light (off page) sexual content, but nothing explicit. The book is full of southernisms like "bless your heart" and "y'all" and more sweet-tea than you can shake a stick at.

Four stars. Cozy mystery comfort food.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes