Arkansas Traveler (Benni Harper Mysteries)
Benni Harper is coming home to Sugartree, Arkansas. The folk-art historian, ranchwoman, and unwitting detective of Earlene Fowler's Agatha Award-winning series is back in the Ozarks for Sugartree Baptist Church's Homecoming festivities. Benni's brought both her husband, Gabe, and her best friend, Elvia Aragon, from California for the occasion, which promises to be a celebration of the best of small-town Southern life. For Benni that will always carry "the memory of muggy Arkansas summer nights filled with the scent of sweet honeysuckle, fresh-mowed grass, and the taste of half-melted Dairy Queen chocolate sundaes."But Benni's nostalgia is cut short abruptly when the worst of small-town Southern life rears its ugly head. Benni's childhood friend, Amen Tolliver, is running for mayor against incumbent Grady Hunter, whose son Toby--a fledgling white supremacist--will do anything to make sure a black woman doesn't win his father's office. When Toby is found with his head beaten in, and Amen's nephew Quinton becomes the prime suspect, Benni's idealism takes a backseat to curiosity--and to the painful consequences of exposing both the prejudices and the skeletons that Sugartree residents would prefer to keep deep in the closet.Fowler is perhaps more concerned with local color than with the rigors of mystery plotting, lovingly creating a world bound by faith, friends, and food--especially food. Witness Benni's soliloquy to Ozark comestibles, sparked by her first glimpse in years of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store: "'Blue Bunny and Yarnell's ice cream,' I said gleefully. 'Delta Gold syrup. White Lily flour.  Aunt Nellie's corn relish. Martha White cornmeal. Crowder peas! Eight flavors of grits. Eight! You can't getthatin California.'" But so appealing are Fowler's characters and so enticing is that world, that the novel's essentially anticlimactic denouement will probably seem of little importance. Fowler is rapidly proving herself a master of the American cozy, and the Benni Harper series continues to improve with each outing.--Kelly Flynn