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Mama Rides Shotgun (A Mace Bauer Mystery) ReviewBook quote: "Snores rumbled from inside Sal's Cadillac. How in the world could he sleep with Mama rattling the windows like that? I tapped at the glass by her head. `Wake up, it's me again.' I'd left my campsite without touching anything, backing away from my shredded tent the way I'd come. I didn't want to trample any evidence that might be collected. `Mama, open up. It's colder out here than a freezer full of sheared sheep.'"Following successful MAMA DOES TIME, Deborah Sharp continues the Mace Bauer series with MAMA RIDES SHOTGUN. In both, Sharp readers know that native Floridians take pride in being called Cracker. Now, Mama encourages daughter Mace to join her on a six-day horseback ride called The Florida Cracker Trail, a real-life ride in which the author participated. Originally, the Cracker Trail was a cattle drive, not unlike the Chisholm Trail. As always, Mama hopes to marry off her middle daughter who has entered the precarious age of 30-something--even considering for Mace an aged physician who is suspected in tampering with evidence in the subject murder.
This humorous mystery questions who would want to bump off wealthy Lawton Bramble by adding a "spice" not found at Publix grocery store to the cattleman's chili he prepared for riders on the Cracker Trail, chili "spicy enough to peel paint." Agatha Christie fans will be thrilled to learn that Sharp has written in as many possibilities as there are passengers on the Orient Express. Surely Rosalee Deveraux ("Mama") isn't a suspect, though Lawton has a heart that flutters like a candle and used to be Mama's beau--one of many. (Blanche Devereaux, eat your golden-girl heart out.) The young widow Wynonna, who beat Mama to the alter, displays insincere grief that's obvious even to the visually challenged. Lawton's handsome son Trey ("not worth a milk bucket under a bull") has some quirky issues most shrinks wouldn't touch with the proverbial pole--unbalanced and needing money to maintain a lifestyle to match his playboy image? Not even Lawton's level-headed adopted daughter, Belle, who doesn't arrive until after Lawton dies, can be ruled out. Of course, people often achieve wealth by walking over friends. Could childhood friend, Johnny Adams, whom Lawton used as a ladder to climb to success, taking Johnny's true love along for the climb, be the culprit? Curiously, Johnny is the Cracker Trail's chuck-wagon cook, easily able to add ingredients to Lawton's chili.
Pain-in-the-patootie matchmaking-Mama--who "can talk the ears off a row of corn" -- constantly tries to find a man for Mace. Trying to convince Mama not to get Mace married off is like pushing a horse with a rope. On the day Lawton chucks his chili, son Trey gets a face full of Mace, until his ex-fiancée catches the smooching couple. The apple doesn't fall far from her tree. Sexy Latin lover, Detective Carlos Martinez, is "hotter than a stolen pistol" and complicates matters--and not just with his lowly opinion of backwoods law enforcement officers. "My heart felt like it wanted to sprout wings and fly out of my mouth. I guess I wasn't over Carlos after all." Lacking horse sense, Martinez doesn't realize that when Mace's sisters--Mama's family--come along for the ride, they too may be in danger.
Mama's horse is injured and she needs another to complete the ride. But it's the widow Wynonna getting Mama to ride a high-spirited horse named Shotgun galloping away at the crack of a whip that gets Mace's knickers in a knot. Did the sound of a whip popping spook Shotgun, or is something more sinister buzzing about?
On an unusually cold February night, Mace discovers her tent shredded as a threat. Then, a rattlesnake is found inside a jacket and couldn't have gotten so close on its own--especially since reptiles are as cold-blooded as Lawton's murderer. Approaching a highway crossing with trucks barreling down on her, Trey's ex cracks a whip against Mace's horse, making it dash across, sure to make Mace road kill. A note that tells Mace she is on the right track mysteriously disappears, as she and her sisters group-think through the many possible suspects--and why Mace appears to be a likely target for a second homicide.
Mama's hometown Himmarshee is "an hour and a half from the Atlantic coast." But then, anywhere in Florida is within ninety minutes of some coast. Put a pin-spot near Lake Okeechobee's sparsely populated shore, and you've located the fictional fly-speck town. Sharp possibly is the only writer today who can use "critter" in a grammatically correct sentence. For a Southerner to see "y'all" used properly in a contemporary novel is as refreshing as iced tea on an August afternoon, "when it's so hot the hens are laying hard-boiled eggs."
Unlike other mystery series, where the protagonist shines as brilliantly as the desert sun, the Mace Bauer series is a family affair, a group effort to piece together the puzzle, though Mace is a maze of observation skills that any detective would love to own. Any of the "Mama" series is a light, breezy read. No autopsies or gruesome descriptions of disembowelment or decapitation with helicopter rotors. Just a good, old-fashioned mystery, the kind we read when school was out for summer. Though the online venues for which I review don't assign a Star Rating, Amazon and I do. I've reached into my Star Jar and pulled out a handful. Five are far too few.
---Reviewed by L. Dean Murphy
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