Miss Julia to the Rescue

February 20, 2012
In Ross’s delightful 13th Miss Julia cozy set in Abbotsville, N.C. (after 2011’s Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle), Miss Julia decides to tackle long-neglected redecorating projects while her husband, Sam, is on a trip to the Holy Land. Home improvement gets put on hold after Miss Julia learns that her stepdaughter Hazel Marie’s PI husband, J.D. Pickens, is in the hospital in West Virginia, where he was working on a case, and the local sheriff refuses to release him. Miss Julia and nurse’s aide Etta May Wiggins drive to West Virginia, where they wind up stooping to devious and amusing means to rescue J.D. Back home, Miss Julia has to contend with kooky Agnes Whitman, a former Abbotsville resident who’s returned with a host of tattooed cult followers. Those who like smiles with their crimes will be satisfied. 4-city author tour. Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents.

April 1, 2012
The trouble with men is they constantly need women to rescue them. Miss Julia, so glutted with southern manners that she's befriended the mistress and child of her first husband, the late Wesley Springer, receives a call from that woman's new husband, Mr. Pickens, asking help of Miss Julia's current husband. Mr. Pickens, a private eye, doesn't say why or where he is exactly, but since Miss Julia's better half is off touring the Holy Land, it falls to her to find the caller. Leaving the architect, the carpenters, the painters and the plumbers to get on with redecorating her home, she insists that the bodacious Etta Mae, a repository of medical know-how, accompany her on a trip to the wilds of West Virginia where, she believes, Mr. Pickens has been searching for a missing person. Currently, however, the searcher's sequestered in a hospital room with gun wounds on his backside, any contact with him forbidden by the local sheriff. Undaunted, Miss Julia and Etta Mae, after an agonizing visit to an assembly of snake-handlers, climb through windows, don disguises, manhandle Mr. Pickens into their car and drive him home to recover. That pesky sheriff, enamored of Etta Mae, follows just as Miss Julia embarks on a rescue of Adam, a worker at her house who's gotten entangled with a slew of tattooed, body-pierced zealots out at Agnes Whitman's place. Plot loopholes abound, along with religious claptrap that allows the decorous heroine (Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle, 2011, etc.) to proselytize for her more temperate Presbyterian lifestyle.

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March 1, 2012
Abbotsville, North Carolina's doyenne, Miss Julia, is at a loss. Husband Sam is on a trip to the Holy Land, and Hazel Marie has taken up residence in Sam 's old house with her twins. It would be a good time to redecorate. First, however, Miss Julia and cohort Etta Mae Wiggins take a road trip to West Virginia to rescue Hazel Maries husband, J. D., who is being held prisoner in a hospital. Back home, everyone is abuzz about the strange goings on at Agnes Whitman's new place. There seem to be a lot of people in town with tattoos and body piercings. Are they part of a cult? Is the carpenter Miss Julia hired involved? This, the thirteenth in the Miss Julia series, has a bit more punch than the last few, in part because it takes her away from home for awhile. Neither the mystery surrounding Agnes Whitman nor the one involving J. D. amount to much, and Hazel Marie, who added such zing to earlier books in the series, has faded into the background. Still, there's plenty here to satisfy fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)