Can't Never Tell: A Southern Fried Mystery (Southern Fried Mysteries)
Feisty attorney Avery Andrews seems to be settling back into Dacus, her South Carolina hometown. About a year ago she was a high-powered malpractice attorney in Columbia, South Carolina. Now, at the beginning of July, she is still learning how to be a small-town general-practice lawyer. Fortunately, there are a couple of puzzles at hand to which she can apply her lawyerly mind. First, her precocious seven-year-old niece discovers that a mannequin in a carnival fright house is a real skeleton. Who was it, how old is it, and where did it come from? The next day Avery attends a picnic with her sister’s family and other college faculty members. A faculty wife falls off a waterfall. Was she pushed, and if so, who was responsible? Pickens won the Malice Domestic Contest for Best Traditional Mystery (for Southern Fried, 2004), and this fifth in the series solidifies her as an assured voice in the cozy subgenre. Unlike other cozy authors, Pickens never resorts to caricatures of either southerners or lawyers. --Judy Coon