The mystery genre, from cozy to thriller, dominates now, in Alabama as everywhere, but it was not always so. One can suggest that the immensely popular Southern Sisters novels of Birmingham’s Anne George led the pack. The first of George’s series, “Murder on a Girls’ Night Out,” an Agatha winner for first mystery, set the pattern. In it, she created the Southern sisters, Mary Alice and Patricia Anne.
Mary Alice is 65 years old, five foot ten, weighs 250 pounds, eats and drinks with abandon and has been married and widowed three times, each husband having left her wealthier than before. All presently reside in Elmwood Cemetery. Mary Alice, flamboyant, is presently dating Bill, aged 72, and she loves him as she had in fact loved all her husbands, madly.
Patricia Anne is 60, five feet one inch, weighs one hundred and five pounds and is excruciatingly careful about everything. She worries about calories, carbohydrates, cholesterol, blood pressure and is allergic to alcohol. She has been married happily to Fred for 40 years. Mary Alice nags at her constantly to let loose a little more. Patricia Anne, a retired English teacher, a careful observer, is our narrator on these jaunts around Alabama.
In this first novel we learn immediately that Mary Alice has taken up line dancing at a highway joint, the Scoot ‘n’ Boot, and, always impetuous, has bought the business. Taking Patrica Anne to see the place they meet Ed Meadows, the previous owner, a likeable man with a hula girl tattoo on his forearm with the caption “Hail Maui Full of Grass.” He can make the hula girl dance.
The Scoot ‘n’ Boot is fun—a big dance floor, big sound system, excellent kitchen, and extravagant decorations, including a wishing well. It seems like a good investment. The very next day, however, they learn that Ed has been found hanged in the wishing well with his throat cut. It was not suicide. Since this is a cozy, not a thriller, we are told these details, not shown them. As the sisters and the police investigate, we learn that Alabama’s premier political family—fictional of course—is involved, three generations of them.
The sisters are bright and the crimes get solved, but what readers really like is the Alabama setting, food and folkways, and the banter, affectionate and witty, between the two very different sisters. The reader is delighted when Patricia Anne, finally goaded by Mary Alice, eats some fried chicken or a few chocolate chip cookies—and loves it!
They get into some potentially dangerous fixes, but, not to worry, this was a series from the start and the second volume, “Murder on a Bad Hair Day,” was published only a few months later. There is another about snake handlers, and the last, eighth in the series, 2001, was “Murder Boogies with Elvis.”
