“Bless Your Heart” is not exactly a thriller. It is indeed a murder mystery. There is a killing and police search for the perpetrator. But this novel is really a compulsively readable, very funny, vicious satirical treatment of Buckhead, a section of Atlanta crammed with pretentious upscale houses, new mansions meant to look old, and some genuinely beautiful old places, a slice of Atlanta that, it seems, really needs making fun of.
In the novel, some Buckheaders claim, since they contribute more in to taxes than other areas of the city, they would be better off as a separate municipality. They want secession. That rarely works. In the meantime, they complain about city services, So, when a murder occurs, they demand a swift, efficient police response. They can’t have the papers discussing day after day how unsafe their Eden is. They get the full attention of the police, and what the investigation reveals is disturbing and hilarious. Jonathan Swift could not have done it better.
The killing. The evening after a little league game at which the parents behave abominably, screaming and cursing at the 12-year-old players on the opposing team, the boys’ coach, Anderson Tupper, a handsome, seemingly jovial fellow, is found murdered in the dugout. Atlanta Police Detective Shay Claypool is assigned the case. Claypool, an African-American single mother, conscientiously pursues leads in this alien world and is horrified by what she uncovers.
So is the reader. The arrogance, the grotesque sense of entitlement, the disregard for common decency is startling. The husbands are awful enough. They are mostly devoted to getting richer, playing golf and adultery, both romantic and professional. Neither their business deals nor private lives will bear scrutiny.
The wives, known as “The Buckhead Betties,” are so spoiled, so back-stabbing to one another, the novel calls for a suspension of disbelief. You will also have to suspend disbelief to take in what Detective Claypool discovers. These half-dozen society women, the “Buckhead Betties,” are AWFUL. One sells drugs to the others. One—a nice one!—is a secret alcoholic, others not so secret. The women are sexually rambunctious too, and some may have been involved with the dead man, Tupper.
Children are bribed with cash and cars. Several marriages are entirely transactional. There are complicated prenups and one wife charges her older husband for wifely intimacies, payable in cash. At the major social events, especially at the Driving Club, all shoes, purses, dresses, hats are scrutinized by all. Brand names abound. Establishing Alpha to Omega order among this tribe is a perpetual contest.
The one virtue these women share, thank goodness, is a love for their children, and this novel has some twists and a superb ending which I, after hundreds of murder mysteries, did NOT see coming. Rachel Hawkins’s gentle satire “The Wife Upstairs,” makes Mountain Brook look, by comparison, like Grover’s Corners.
