Saralee Says
Did you know that one of Nashville's own, author Sallie Bissell, has been nominated for a national Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America for the best paperback original of 2004? Call the Devil by His Oldest Name and her other detective novels featuring Mary Crow are some of the hottest books selling today.
If you have not discovered this wonderful series, then run to your nearest bookstore or library and start reading them right now. I just love mysteries that feature characters like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch and Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins. I am happy to say there are now four books about Crow, the feisty lawyer who finds herself not only prosecuting criminals in Atlanta but also solving murder mysteries in North Carolina.
Bissell's previous books are In the Forest of Harm (Bantam), A Darker Justice, and the Shamus Award nominated Call the Devil by His Oldest Name (Dell).
Legacy of Masks sends Crow back to her home of Pisgah County in North Carolina and to her former love interest Jonathan Walkingstick. Crow wants to move back home and work for the local prosecutor. However, Crow has been so successful in the big city of Atlanta and in various parts of Appalachia that she intimidates the locals, and no one will hire her. As a result, she hangs up her own shingle and soon finds herself on the other side of the law as a defense attorney rather than a prosecutor. Ridge Standingdeer, an Ani Zaguhi Cherokee, is arrested for a horrific murder. Crow believes in Standingdeer's innocence but has her hands full dealing with his mysticism and the facts of the law. Someone has been on a killing spree for sometime, and all of the victims are young girls.
For such a rural area, Pisgah County has its share of strange characters. Deke Keener is a developer. Keener tricks families into moving to North Carolina to work for him so that he can get girls to play on his "special" girls softball team. Then there is Jerry Cochran, the new sheriff. Crow and Cochran were high school classmates, and they have to get used to each other in their new roles.
The most interesting characters in Legacy of Masks are Kayla Daws and Avis Martin. These two girls do things that no mother wants her daughters to do in order to catch a child molester. Legacy of Masks is a page-turner sure to keep you on the edge of your seat and impossible to put down.
Larry's Language
Mystery books come in many different disguises. Some are crime novels that feature violence and craziness such as Elmore Leonard's The Hot Kid (HarperCollins). Some are whodunits that are puzzles to solve like Nevada Barr's Hard Truth (Penguin Group). Then there are character studies that reveal the sinners among us like Mary Higgins Clark's No Place Like Home (Simon & Schuster). Still others are historical novels that show how little people's inhumanity has changed such as One Corpse Too Many (Warner) by Ellis Peters. Bissell's Legacy of Masks combines the best features of good mysteries with its violent plot twists, intriguing characters and problems for our heroine, former district attorney Crow, to solve.
The basic story in this novel about the harms to young girls is elegant, simple and deadly. Crow is attempting to come home again to Pisgah County, North Carolina, with its memories of family strife, unrequited love and old friends who now seem distant to her. Crow is an admirable and successful attorney - except for that time in a previous novel when she had to kill the sheriff. Crow is a fighter and a survivor. She has killed before and is even tougher now. What Crow really wants is to re-establish her personal relationship with Walkingstick but like all true love, things are complicated.
The complexity deepens when Crow opens her own legal practice and is retained by the county's most prominent real estate developer who is easily one of the most degenerate bad guys in recent books.
She is a crime solver that we want to read more about because of her can-do attitude as she confronts and unravels her love life problems and local prejudices while solving a few murders along the way. Add the beauty and savagery of the western Carolina mountains as a setting and Bissell ranks up there with the best: Robert Parker, John Sanford, Jeffrey Deaver, Patricia Cornwell and Jan Burke.
Join us for our next Book Club discussion which will feature By Blood Written (Seven House) by Nashville author Steven Womack.
