Book Review: A Little Death in Dixie by Lisa Turner

a little death in dixie cover
Synopsis:  The blues were born out of pride, anger and need. Murder comes from those same dark places.

One of Memphis' most seductive and notorious socialites has disappeared. She's either off on another of her drunken escapades or the disappearance is something much more frightening. What begins as an ordinary day's work for Detective Billy Able of the Memphis P.D. quickly grows into a high-level spider's web of tragedy, mystery, suspicion, passion, and sordid secrets--including a few of Billy's own.

Along with Mercy Snow, the estranged sister of the missing socialite, Billy follows a twisted path of human frailty and corruption to disturbing truths that undermine everything he thought he knew about himself and the people he loves.

An interesting interview with the Author on local news channel:

Read and excerpt on the Bell Bridge Books site!

About the Author: Born in Memphis, Lisa Turner spent her childhood either on the back of a horse or reading fiction. At times she did them simultaneously. Flannery O’Connor and James Lee Burke were her literary heroes long before she knew the term  “Southern Gothic.” From the experience of managing her family’s interior design firm, she earned a PhD in the peculiarities of human nature . . . talk about Southern Gothic!

More recently, she and her husband bought a home in Nova Scotia, where the landscape changed from cotton fields to lobster boats. She currently shuttles between the Deep South of her childhood and the wildly beautiful coast of Nova Scotia.
 “But I remain a Southern woman to the bone,” she says. “Here’s how I know”:
  • I’ve worn elbow-length gloves in a beauty contest.
  • The term “funeral food” makes perfect sense to me.
  • I can ride, shoot, fry up catfish, and I drink my Jack Daniels neat.
  • You can’t fool me with silver plate. I know sterling when I see it.  That goes for men, too.
  • I can thump a watermelon and know if it’s sweet.
  • The plot of A Streetcar Named Desire and Suddenly, Last Summer is suspiciously similar to my favorite family stories.
  • I know better than to go swimming in the Mississippi River.
A Little Death in Dixie is Lisa Turner’s debut novel. 
Review This is one of these books that you start picturing as a TV series as you start reading it! As a big fan of Memphis Beat on TNT, I have to admit, I started adding their soundtrack in the back of my head as I was reading and after the 4th chapter, started seeing Jason Lee as the main characters. NOT that this was a bad thing. In fact it's a perfect match!

I loved this book! It has the perfect mix of mystery, Southern politics and family tradition, mixed with a good old police procedural to keep you hooked til the last page! I hope that Mrs. Turner decides to revisit the characters in a new book! I will definitely be in line to buy it! I'd love to tell ya'll that I was giving my copy up for giveaway, but I'm going to keep this one! The book is available in paperback form, making it SUPER reasonable at any of the book sites, so pick up a copy today, you won't regret it at all!






Disclosure / Disclaimer:  I received this book, free of charge,from Belle Books,  for blog review purposes! No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to review it.