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When Dr. Alala Diakos, a visiting professor of Greek literature, comes to teach at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, it doesn't take long for controversy to follow. With her fervent feminist ideals and revolutionary leanings, she quickly earns the admiration of many—and the ire of others. During a speech in the park, in which Alala tries to organize the women of Zinnia to demand equal pay, the crowd gets unruly, with men heckling the professor. And when PI Sarah Booth Delaney finds a sniper rifle and scope in the bushes, she begins to worry that there are more than fighting words at stake.
Sarah Booth calls her boyfriend, Sheriff Coleman Peters, who offers the protection of the Zinnia police department, but Alala rejects him, saying she has no use for the law or men. And when a notorious domestic abuser is found dead the next day, suspicions turn to Alala herself, who was overheard bragging that she would take him down. Tensions deepen when connections are drawn between Alala and two similar, previous deaths.
But Sarah Booth doesn't want to believe Alala is a murderer, and when the professor shows up at Sarah Booth's doorstep, asking her to find the real criminal, Sarah Booth embarks on a case stretching across the Delta. Yet Alala remains at the center of it all, and Sarah Booth can't help but wonder if the killer has been with her all along ...
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
May 18, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781980043423
- File size: 310750 KB
- Duration: 10:47:23
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 26, 2021
The shooting murder of Curtis Miller, “a well-known domestic abuser,” kick-starts Haines’s middling 23rd Sarah Booth Delaney mystery (2020’s A Garland of Bones). The prime suspect, Greek literature professor Alala Diakos, who has come to Zinnia, Miss., to write a book on the battle for women’s rights in America, hires Sarah Booth to prove her innocence. When Sarah Booth asks her PI partner, Tinkie Richmond, about Dr. Diakos’s philosophy, Tinkie answers: “Men who abuse women should be exterminated with the utmost efficiency. Hopefully, by a mob of angry women.” That the professor was on the suspect list for two similar murders doesn’t discourage Sarah Booth, and she and Tinkie set out to discover who else might have wanted Miller dead. Sarah Booth’s intuition tells her that the three murders are connected, but what could Miller, a nonacademic, have in common with the other victims, an English professor at Ole Miss and a sociologist at Vanderbilt? The unfocused, digressive plot builds to a hurried resolution that leaves readers with unanswered questions. Cozy fans attuned to the #MeToo movement may want to check this one out. Agent: Marian Young, Young Agency.
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