Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead-Livia J. Washburn

Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead
Livia J. Washburn
Kensington, Nov 2008, $22.00
ISBN 9780758225665

In Atlanta divorced (from Dan) Delilah Dickinson opens up Delilah Dickinson’s Literary Tours hiring her daughter and son-in-law, and also dealing with her battling twin teenage nieces. Her first tour is a delightful visit to landmarks famous, almost famous and obscure linked to Gone with the Wind novelist Margaret Mitchell.

The tour is doomed from the onset as Murphy would seem an optimist with everything the could go wrong going wrong; but it is at “Tara” for dinner that it finally collapses. Steven Kelley, an actor portraying Rhett Butler on the Gone with the Wind Tour, is found dead in the Tara mansion garden. The lead detective insists everyone remain at Tara while he solves the case with Delilah's interference.

With its references to Gone with the Wind including the title, readers will enjoy this Atlanta tour. The story line is amusing as a combo police procedural amateur sleuth competition. Although the whodunit is more a backdrop to the Literary Tour especially the stay at Tara, readers will enjoy this lively and colorrful cozy.

Harriet Klausner