Susan McBride The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club

The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club

Susan McBride

Avon, Feb 2005, $6.99, 352 pp.

ISBN 0060564083

Only for her mother will debutante dropout turned web designer Andy Kendricks attend the funeral of Cissy Kendrick's close friend Bebe Kent. After the funeral, they go to the memorial service held at the dead woman's residence in the exclusive assisted care facility Belle Mede. When Cissy learns that Bebe died in her pajamas, she thinks that death listed as natural causes was really a homicide because the victim always slept in the nude.

The facility is run by Annabelle, who knew Andy when they went to an upscale camp for blue blooded rich kids. Annabelle and Cissy's daughter were close friends, two misfits who clung together for security. Cissy maneuvers Annabelle into letting her and Andy investigate Bebe's's death by posing as the new resident and her niece, but on their first day in Bebe's home, another woman close to Cissy is found dead. Cissy believes that Sarah Lee Seville was also a homicide victim because her make up was smudged, something that she would fix immediately in case someone saw her. At first thinking her mother's grief is making her crazy, Andy finally comes around to her view point because there are too many links between the two dead women. Nobody, least of all Andy, thought that Cissy would be in danger from the killer.

Susan McBride infuses her exciting amateur sleuth mystery with a gallows's humor that is both appropriate and funny in a macabre sort of way. Although Andy thinks her mother is wrong in her description that murder took the lives of her two friends, the love she feels for Cissy compels her to find out if there is any evidence to support her theory . This down home Texas mystery is enjoyable, entertaining, and riddled with red herrings and unexpected plot twists.