Helpful Score: 3
Blanche, a street-smart black domestic on the run from the sheriff for passing a bad check (again), winds up cooking and caring for edgy Miz Grace, her husband Everett, her wealthy, reclusive Aunt Emmeline, and her somewhat retarded Cousin Mumsfield at their summer home in Hokeysville, North Carolina--in a quirky mystery debut that pits Blanche against a Faulknerian cast of oddballs who may be trying to kill each other off to claim a southern fortune. Did Everett murder his first wife for her money, and does he have similar plans for his second? Is Grace trying to con her feeble auntie into signing a new will discounting Mumsfield and exalting her? Does auntie have a drinking problem, or is she the sweet, old woman Mumsfield remembers? Is the sheriff blackmailing Everett or vice versa? As Blanche wrestles with these problems, including what's in the cellar of the family's winter home, she communes telepathically with Mumsfield, phones home regularly to make sure her Mama and her two kids are all right, and ties in several other murders before heading off for the peace (she hopes) of Boston.
Helpful Score: 2
What a charming book! And a fresh perspective, too.
Blanche is a black single mother who works as a domestic in the South. Her adventures are interesting, mainly because Barbara Neely is a wonderful writer -- This is one of those stories where the plot proceeds slowly, and it's not really clear you're in a murder mystery per se, because there's not much murdering and sleuthing -- but you don't care because the writing is so good, Blanche is such an interesting person, the life she lives and her views as a black domestic in a white world is so different from my own, that I could not put this book down, and didn't want to.
I have got to see if I can get my hands on what else Ms Neely has written. I want to enjoy her writing again.
mac mccarthy
Blanche is a black single mother who works as a domestic in the South. Her adventures are interesting, mainly because Barbara Neely is a wonderful writer -- This is one of those stories where the plot proceeds slowly, and it's not really clear you're in a murder mystery per se, because there's not much murdering and sleuthing -- but you don't care because the writing is so good, Blanche is such an interesting person, the life she lives and her views as a black domestic in a white world is so different from my own, that I could not put this book down, and didn't want to.
I have got to see if I can get my hands on what else Ms Neely has written. I want to enjoy her writing again.
mac mccarthy
Helpful Score: 2
Blanche is a one-of-a-kind character. I read this after reading "The Help"--puts that book in a different and funny perspective.
Helpful Score: 1
First of the Blanche White series. Great fun! A feisty and wise woman discovers a terribly messed up and criminal family.
Helpful Score: 1
This 1992 novel is the first full-length mystery with a black woman as the main character. Highly recommended as a unique mystery. When this novel was released in 1992, it won the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery.
