Reviews

Crossed Bones by Carolyn Haines

klippy's review against another edition

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5.0

WOW I love this series -- in fact too much! All I have done is read today and I am not getting ready to start the next one!!!

book_concierge's review against another edition

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3.0

Sarah Booth Delaney manages to lose three beaus in one night! A new Delta record. I enjoy this mystery series. Fast, entertaining reads.

duskvamp's review

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funny medium-paced

3.0

rachelellyn's review against another edition

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4.0

Always fun.

cb9868's review against another edition

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4.0

I am enjoying this series. I think this story is the best one yet. Can’t wait to continue reading about Sarah Booth!

momruns's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

git_r_read's review against another edition

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5.0

CROSSED BONES is now my favorite of the Mississippi Delta Mystery series. Granted it's darker than the ones I've listened to previously, but it still maintained the touches of humor and had the wonderfully written characters, especially Sarah Booth, Jitty, and Tinky who have become friends I've grown to love and look forward to hanging with each visit.
Another part that made it such a great listen is the blues music that threads throughout. I don't know when I started listening to and loving the blues, but it's been a huge part of my music collection (and part of what brought DH and I together). So that added magic to the listening of this book, too.
In the description from the back of the audibook, it says that this is an amateur sleuth mystery. I disagree. Sarah Booth and Tinky have moved way beyond amateur. They are proven private investigators with a fairly solid track record. And they get paid! Not amateurs any longer. If the series requires a label, it's a suspense mystery with humor tucked in.
Five not amateur anymore beans.....

mdlaclair's review against another edition

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3.0

I have to say I liked this book most because it is the book where Sarah does not get to sleep with every possible male and get away with it. While the murder mystery swirls around race issues.I was happy to see that the narrative show a more emotionally troubled side to Sarah. She finally wants a Man she can not have. I would say that made this book better then the rest having said that we get to see all the same great secondary characters that make the story so fun.

plantbirdwoman's review against another edition

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3.0

Sarah Booth Delaney lays claim to being a non-traditional Southern woman. She is in her thirties, a time by which any self-respecting Southern Belle would be long married and raising a family. This is certainly the path that would have been chosen for her by Jitty, the ghost of her great-great-grandmother's nanny with whom she shares her home, Dahlia House, in Zinnia, Mississippi. Jitty watches over her and bosses and nags her, but Sarah Booth continues to go her own way.

She has eschewed marriage and is trying to establish a private investigation business with her best friend, Tinkie. The aim of the business is to provide enough money to save the family plantation home and support Sarah Booth in the style to which she is accustomed. So, yes, she is a bit non-traditional perhaps, but in one respect she is VERY traditional: She is always called by her double name Sarah Booth, never just Sarah. It's a Southern thang, dontcha know.

Sarah Booth has had some success on the few cases that she's had. She has shown a flair and an instinct for investigating. She will need all of that flair and instinct to bring her latest case to a successful conclusion.

A respected man of the community, a talented blues musician and owner of a blues club in Zinnia, has been brutally murdered in that club late one night. He was stabbed and some money was taken from the till. Later the murder weapon and blood-stained money are found in the motorcycle saddlebags of the club's guitarist and singer, the star attraction who brings the people in. He was also a friend of the man who was killed - a man he had first met when they were both in prison in Michigan.

On the basis of the circumstantial evidence, the guitarist/singer, Scott, is arrested and charged with murder. There is a racial component to the crime since the man who was killed was black and the man charged with the killing is white. This raises specters of past crimes and threatens to tear the little town and the county apart along racial lines.

The murdered man's wife, Ida Mae Keys, is convinced that Scott is not guilty and she hires Sarah Booth to prove it. Sarah Booth and Tinkie soon find that there are multiple complications to the case. The Keyses' grown son, Emanuel, is a highly educated and successful businessman who resented his father because he always felt that he took second place to the music with him. He is also a race warrior who believes in strict separation between black and white.

Two motorcycle-riding thugs who are friends of Scott's are in town and would agree with Emanuel on that point. They spout their racist rhetoric to anyone who will listen. It looks like the two extreme sides may be headed for a clash.

Meanwhile, a psychotic groupie/stalker of Scott's further muddies the waters and makes Sarah Booth's and Tinkie's investigations even more complicated.

The main conundrum, though, is why anyone would have wanted to kill the murdered man. He was highly respected, a man of peace who believed in the power of music to bring people together, but he wasn't a rich man and there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason for wanting him dead. Finally, perhaps two-thirds of the way through the book, Sarah Booth stumbles upon the motive and things begin to come together for the investigators.

As usual in these books, we are treated to some hot and toe-curling sex - at least we are told by Sarah Booth that it was hot and toe-curling. Of course, a lady never reveals the details. This time her partner is Scott, once he is bailed out of jail, of course. Jitty, who is usually quite anxious for Sarah Booth to jump in the sack and get on with producing a Delaney heir, does not approve.

Sarah Booth has another suitor this time, as well; a wealthy Memphis businessman with whom Tinkie and her husband Oscar set her up. He's everything that Jitty would approve of in a suitor, but, in the end, he doesn't ring Sarah Booth's chimes.

Maybe that's because she's really in love with a THIRD man, the local sheriff, Coleman Peters. Unfortunately, Peters is already married and both he and Sarah Booth are much too noble to violate his marriage vows.

Poor Sarah Booth and poor Jitty. It looks like they are never going to get that necessary and fully sanctioned bed partner for Sarah Booth. She may indeed be the end of the line for the Delaneys.

Never mind. There'll always be another mystery to solve.

rlbasley's review against another edition

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5.0

Crossed Bones (Sara Booth Delaney Mystery Series ) Rb Digital Audiobook. This book sees Sara projected into the middle of another murder mystery.. this time it’s very dangerous. She is hired by an African American woman to prove that a white man did not kill her African American husband,a blues musician. As the case starts to threatens to tear the Southern Town apart, Sara’s heart is torn between three men. A good paced adventure and an interesting ending. I’m still a fan.