Southern Ghost by Carolyn G. Hart

Southern Ghost (Death on Demand Mystery, #8)

by Carolyn G. Hart

Annie Darling, owner of the Death on Demand bookstore, is shocked to hear talk about her husband, Max, and a beautiful blonde. By the time she’s faced down a hostile police chief and bailed Max out of the Chastain, South Carolina, jail, the lady has vanished and Max is the prime suspect in an unspecified crime. The baffling, bloodstained trail leads straight to the doorstep of Tarrant House, home of the venerable Southern family with a violent history dating back to the Revolution—and ghosts of a far more recent vintage.
 
Annie and Max find that the dignified façade of Tarrant House hides a hotbed of deadly passions as the family turns on itself in a mayhem of murderous motives and angry accusations. But in the end Annie must summon all her sleuthing skills to stop a desperate killer who is ready to strike again to keep the secrets that haunt the Tarrants from the light of day. . . .

Praise for Southern Ghost 

“Tantalizing . . . keep[s] the reader guessing all the way.”—The Denver Post

“Pleasing . . . chillingly effective…remarkably satisfying.”—Publishers Weekly

“[Annie and Max] make one of the most attractive pairs of sleuths since Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles.”—Chicago Sun-Times

Reviewed by MurderByDeath on

4 of 5 stars

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This was a re-read for me, but the last time I read it was before I kept track of dates or wrote any reviews, so long enough that it almost felt like a new read.

Carolyn Hart is probably the only author currently publishing that comes close to the Grande Dames of Mystery: Christie, Sayers, Mertz, Rinehart, etc.  Her plots are always intricate, her writing excellent, if sometimes excessive, and her characters well developed and complex, with the possible exception of her two protagonists: Max and Annie are always happy and always in love.  Perhaps Hart is too emotionally invested in the Darlings, or perhaps she chooses to retain that vintage-mystery formula of the perfect marriage as a contrast and balance to the dysfunction of all the suspects.  Either way, the stories usually trump the irritation of perfection.

Southern Ghost feels like Hart's homage to the gothic mysteries of the early 20th century: old house, old family, deep secrets, and ghosts walking the bluffs.  Dark and stormy nights, power outages, and old sins casting long shadows.  In typical cozy fashion, justice prevails and there's a happy ending, but nobody comes out of this one (save Max and Annie, of course) unscathed; everybody loses as all the skeletons are flushed out of the closets and the bodies pile up.  This is a cozy, but not the modern, saccharine interpretation.

This is the 8th in the series, but with the exception of references to off-stage recurring characters, there's no reason why this book could not be read as a stand-alone.  To anyone considering giving cozies a try, I recommend trying Hart's Death on Demand series to see cozies at their best.

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  • 20 September, 2016: Reviewed