The tabby cat Mrs Murphy continues to watch over her lady
owner Harry Haristeen in TALL TAIL the latest in the 'Mrs
Murphy' series by Rita Mae Brown, also credited to her cat
Sneaky Pie Brown. That must be an elderly cat by now; I've
been reading these books for years. The Virginia setting is
lovely as ever with plenty of room on the farm for the
tabby, her longhair friend Pewter, corgi Tee Tucker and
horses. A sudden storm causes a lot of damage, and the
death of a woman found by Harry at the wheel of her car
goes almost unremarked in the chaos.
We see socialising of present day and back in 1874. Life
was quite different then in the South with carriages,
servants and without civil rights for all. A family living
on a big estate and growing tobacco talk of little but the
blooded horses they breed. Abuses of servant girls go on
but are not mentioned in polite company.
Barbara Leader, the casualty in the car, turns out to have
died from a poison which mimics a heart attack. Harry is
naturally shocked that a local lady could have been killed
in this callous fashion. She starts to make enquiries. Like
many small farmers in books I'm reading these days, Harry
and her husband Fair are running an organic farm, and Harry
wants a good website to help them sell their sunflowers and
hay. As she drives around the Crozet district ostensibly on
this errand, dog and cats in her car, Harry asks about
Barbara; whether she had money or relationship issues, who
knew her and would have access to thallium chloride.
Because the episode is set in 2016 the background includes
the ongoing political candidates speaking on TV, with local
interest included.
History is all around the people in Virginia, their land
and society are steeped in it, and Harry eventually learns
what the reader has suspected all along, that the shadows
of history lie long on the land. Rita Mae Brown could be
accused of telling a tall tale with this book, which is no
doubt why she has titled it TALL TAIL instead. The brave
cats and dog will as ever endear themselves to animal-
loving readers while those folks who enjoy a mystery with
both contemporary and historical aspects will have a good
time. Get ready for some genuine Southern hospitality.
In this fast-paced mystery by Rita Mae Brown and her feline
co-author Sneaky Pie Brown, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen and
her animal friends seek to solve a whodunit rooted in
eighteenth-century Virginia—uncovering a shocking secret
that refuses to stay buried.
TALL
TAIL
At any moment a perfect summer day
in Crozet, Virginia—nestled within the Blue Ridge
Mountains—might turn stormy and tempestuous, as Harry knows
too well when a squall suddenly sweeps in. In a blink,
Harry’s pickup nearly collides with a careening red car that
then swerves into a ditch. Harry recognizes the dead driver
slumped over the vehicle’s steering wheel: Barbara Leader
was nurse and confidante to former Virginia governor Sam
Holloway.
Though Barbara’s death is ruled a
heart attack, dissenting opinions abound. After all, she was
the picture of health, which gives Harry and her four-legged
companions pause. A baffling break-in at a local business
leads Harry to further suspect that a person with malevolent
intent lurks just out of sight: Something evil is afoot.
As it happens, Barbara died in the shadow of the
local cemetery’s statue of the Avenging Angel. Just below
that imposing funereal monument lie the remains of one
Francisco Selisse, brutally murdered in 1784. Harry’s
present-day sleuthing draws her back to Virginia’s
slave-holding past and the hunt for Selisse’s killer. Now
it’s up to Harry and her furry detectives—Mrs. Murphy,
Pewter, and Tee Tucker—to expose the bitter truth, even if
it means staring into the unforgiving eyes of history and
cornering a callous killer poised to pounce.
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