Jimmie Ruth Evans, Best Served Cold

Best Served Cold

Jimmie Ruth Evans

Berkley, Jan 2007, $6.99

ISBN: 0425213498

Wanda Nell Culpepper lives in Tullahoma, but lately has had a tough time of it. She has adjusted to the fact that her son T.J. has a significant other who is a male and her middle child Miranda has given her a black granddaughter and supports the two of them and her youngest daughter Juliet. Wanda works at the Kountry Kitchen and the supermarket to pay the bills.

One evening while working at the Kountry Kitchen, her younger brother Rusty enters the premises. She has not seen him in over a decade, but he makes it clear that he has not come home to see her. Instead he is seen fighting with Reggie until his compatriot is found murdered. After the police interrogate him, Rusty vanishes. Bert Vines threatens Wanda if she does not quit nosing around. Coach Scott Simpson commits suicide soon after he speaks with Rusty and Wanda Nell. The sheriff's son Marty Shaw threatens Wanda as he knows Rusty has come home to insure the piper is paid with people paying with their lives.

BEST SERVED COLD is an old-fashioned, southern cozy that provides the audience with a sense of the darkness hidden beneath the fa ade of the small charming town. Jimmie Ruth Evans creates characters about whom readers care, especially the beleaguered protagonist, her three children, her grandson and her to-the-rescue, gun-totin' neighbor. Though exhausted from family demands, her two jobs, and now the threats, Wanda proves she is quite the heroine as she adds on to her plate protecting her sibling.

Harriet Klausner