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Callie Valentine is a beautician in Mooreville, Mississippi. She works on the living and the dead, and the dead are usually far more cooperative. She has a Bassett Hound named Elvis, who pontificates with startling regularity on a wide variety of subjects. Callie has a fondness for expensive shoes, a strong sense of family, and an almost ex-husband she doesn't think she can trust as far as she can throw him. Dr. Leonard Laton is recently deceased and his family has descended on Mooreville. Some of them are staying at Callie's house. Dr. Laton can't be buried until one of his children comes back, but the reading of his will causes a lot of disruption. He leaves a considerable portion of his estate to Bubble Malone. And then his corpse disappears. Callie and her toothsome cousin Lovie (who has met very few men she wouldn't get horizontal with) try to find the doctor. They find him in a freezer in Las Vegas, and then they find Bubble Malone, just as cold as the doctor. Who killed Bubble? Who moved Dr. Laton? And who keeps putting red sequined showgirl apparel in his coffin? Callie and Lovie do their best to figure this out. I had some problems with this book. I can ignore, for the most part, that Callie makes a jellyroll pan look deep. Practical issues persist in annoying me. First of all, Callie (as near as I can recall) had maybe four appointments at her salon over the course of the book, and about that many corpses to work on. Now I understand that books and real life are not the same; the beauticians I know work their fannies off to stay in business. So how can Callie afford Jimmy Choos, Salvatore Ferragamos, Juicy Coutures and the like on that kind of business? And she has a habit of giving them away to just about anyone! Then there's her almost ex-husband Jack Jones. She has found out that most of what he's ever told her is probably not true, or only a small fraction of the truth. Plus he bought a Harley, and she wants children. Now I can understand her still having sexual feelings for Jack; what I really can't believe is her total inability to NOT have sex with him under just about any circumstance. She changes the lock on her house specifically to keep him out; he picks the lock; they wind up in bed. And so on. Ad nauseam. Callie can't say no to her mother, either, who has a gambling jones that Callie persists in feeding. The chapters from Elvis are mildly amusing, but don't seem to do much to further the plot. The mystery isn't really solved by anyone in particular; events conspire to make the murderer feel threatened enough to do something stupid. In the grand scheme of things, DEARLY DEPARTED is probably just the book for some readers. I am not one of them.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, June 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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