Review: Outstanding
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 23, 2012
I just love these Savannah Martin and Rafael Collier mysteries.In "Contract Pending," Rafe has been gone for about five weeks, and Savannah misses him.  She promised him that she would check up on his grandmother, Mrs.Jenkins, who is being cared for by Marquita Johnson.  Marquita hates Savannah, and every time Savannah shows up at Mrs. Jenkins' mansion, she shuts the door in Savannah's face.  But Savannah prevails.  However, one morning she gets a call from Detective Tamara Grimaldi telling her to come to the station because Mrs. Jenkins was found wandering through the town on her own.  It comes about that Marquita has left Mrs. Jenkins alone and not been back for days.  Savannah agrees to take her to her apartment.  But, when she gets there, she finds that someone has entered her apartment and trashed her bedroom. She then takes Mrs. Jenkins back to her mansion, and spends the night in Rafe's bedroom.  She is wakened the next morning by Rafe.  The phone interrupts their embrace.  It is Detective Grimaldi, who tells Savannah that Marquita had been shot and found dead in the Bog in Sweetwater.Savannah goes to her mother's home in Sweetwater and to pay her respects to Marquita's husband, who is the Deputy Sheriff.  Her mother, however, is expecting Savannah to accept a marriage proposal from Todd, the Assistant D.A. of Sweetwater, the one who despises Rafe Collier, and who persistently denigrates him to Savannah every chance he gets, and points out that Rafe is not in Savannah's social class.  Savannah is a white Southern Belle and Rafe is the biracial son of a white woman, referred to as LaDonna's "colored boy" who grew up in a trailer on the Bog.  The marked distinction between the social classes of Savannah and Rafe creates a tension of racial bias manifested in the character of Todd and his point of view, and in Savannah's family, especially her mother.In this work, Savannah is maturing more and more, and is coming to realize that Todd is rather overbearing.  But, he is the more acceptable member of society as far as her family is concerned. Rafe is totally unacceptable, in her family's opinion.This book is well worth the read.