Jimmie Ruth Evans Murder Over Easy

Murder Over Easy

Jimmie Ruth Evans

Berkley, July 2006, $6.99, 249

ISBN: 0425209245

Wanda Nell of Tullahoma, Mississippi has known hard times, the worst being when her son T.J. was arrested for killing his father. She made a lot of enemies in the police department for investigating on her own this case, but in the end she cleared her son's name. She is now very happy, living in her double wide trailer with her sixteen year old grandson as well as her daughters while Wanda Nell works part time at the supermarket and full time at a restaurant.

Wanda Nell gets a call from her boss Melvin at the jail where he was arrested for murdering his other waitress who was also his lover along with about half the men in town. She was knifed so many times that her bedroom looked like something out of a slasher movie. Wanda Nell knows he couldn't have committed such a heinous crime and she starts investigating on her own to clear his name. She finds a bankbook that has a huge sum of money in it that her peer couldn't earn on a waitress's salary, a list of powerful men she was blackmailing and a key card to a club in which the movers and shakers belong and the women do more than serve food. Both Wanda Nell and Melvin's lawyer are worried, but the spunky investigator is determined that justice will be served even if she has to do it herself.

Fans of regional mysteries are going to find MURDER OVER EASY a refreshingly original who-done-it. The characters act true to type as everyone who lives in a small southern town knows and the heroine, who usually goes with the flow, becomes an independent tornado sweeping away everything in her path as she pursues the investigation her way. Readers will thoroughly enjoy this talented woman who practices what she preaches and hope Jimmie Ruth Evans will write more stories about this intrepid heroine.

Harriet Klausner