Married for just sixteen months, since December 14, 1977, Dee Ann Bulluck is unhappy with her husband Joe about moving to isolated Narrow Creek, North Carolina, for his job as the new man at the bank. She has a baby girl, no family close by, and no job herself. Dee Ann feels doomed to a life of genteel poverty and boredom--until the murder of the town's two-timing, drug-dealing playboy. Tempted by the $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case, she decides she has a chance of discovering the identity of the killer by simply reading about the murder in the local paper and listening to any gossip Joe brings home from the bank. After all, there's only so much investigating a stay-at-home mama can do. But Dee Ann soon ventures out in Narrow Creek, getting an earful about the murdered man along with a curly perm at the Kut and Kurl. She overhears two of the victim's former girlfriends accuse each other at the Narrow Creek Ladies' Society Arts and Crafts Bazaar and meets another person of interest, the victim's jealous uncle, when she goes for a job interview at the community college. As Dee Ann searches for the killer's identity, she finds her niche in Narrow Creek. She learns her new hometown, respectable on the surface, has an underbelly of cheating women and sexist men. Ms. Dee Ann Meets Murder depicts small-town Southern life in the late 1970s, with leisure suits, funeral food, Sunday church...and a feisty amateur sleuth.
It’s 1982, and Dee Ann Bulluck has enjoyed three peaceful years as a young wife, mother, and technical college instructor since moving to a backyard apartment in small-town Narrow Creek, North Carolina. Then her landlord Floyd Powell dies while sitting in his recliner on a calm Saturday morning. Turns out, his death is due to something more sinister than his diet of honey buns and Pepsi Colas, and the major suspect is Miss Josie, his wife of thirty-five years. Convinced of Miss Josie’s innocence—and by the fact that if her landlady goes to jail, she and husband Joe will likely lose their sweet deal of an apartment—Dee Ann agrees to help Miss Josie prove she's blameless. Their bumbling investigation manages to reveal Floyd’s involvement in some unsavory enterprises, including bootlegging. The reappearance of Miss Josie’s long-lost beau and the meddling of her overbearing, big-city daughter complicate their amateur sleuthing. Her landlord may be dead, but Dee Ann is busy with life: Monday night choir practice at the Methodist church, house-hunting with Joe, and controlling mischievous three-year-old Heather. She barely has time to hide in Miss Josie’s closet to eavesdrop or creep through the woods looking for a still. Will Miss Josie wind up in the big house while Dee Ann ends up with no house? Like its heroine Dee Ann Bulluck, Life and Death in Narrow Creek is smart and sassy, witty and insightful. Readers will discover a cozy mystery warmed by the culture yet complicated by the social issues of the early 1980s in a small Southern town. Book Review: “Small-town stories have an irresistibly quaint allure; throw in a mystery, dark secrets, and down-home characters who may not be what they seem, and it can result in an enjoyable read, as it does in this case.” -- Kirkus Indie Reviews
It’s October in small-town Narrow Creek, North Carolina, and Dee Ann Bulluck is set for a fun morning of picking pumpkins when five-year-old Heather discovers a lady “taking a nap” in Elmer’s Pumpkin Patch. The attractive, well-dressed woman in stiletto heels isn’t asleep—she’s dead—and amateur detective Dee Ann wonders about the identity of this stranger and who strangled her. As usual, husband Joe advises her to stay out of police business. Chief McSwain doesn’t want her meddling in his investigation either. But Dee Ann has a mind of her own and suspects to pursue. Who lured this woman to town and killed her? Was it a plotting boyfriend or a double-crossing drug dealer? Or maybe the body of the mystery woman was randomly dumped off the nearby interstate? It’s almost more than a working mama who’s also trying to renovate an old Victorian home has time to investigate, especially when Dee Ann is asked to tail one of her suspects to an out-of-town location. Husband-wife feuds and wife-mistress confrontations offer clues, or do they? Will Dee Ann discover the killer's identity ? Or will she become the next victim when she gets too close to the truth? Set in 1984, this third cozy mystery in the Narrow Creek Series again features feisty, opinionated Dee Ann Bulluck along with many of the quirky Southern characters readers have come to know in Ms. Dee Ann Meets Murder and Life and Death in Narrow Creek.
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