Miss Julia Paints the Town

April 28, 2008
A local busybody and amateur sleuth, Julia Springer Murdoch tackles the disappearance of three of her friends' husbands and a plan to turn the old North Carolina courthouse into condos. Although Cynthia Darlow has read other Miss Julia novels, she doesn't sound like a native Tarheel. All of Julia's female friends sound pretty much alike, especially during rapid-fire verbal exchanges. Despite differences in social background, they all drawl out their sentences and place interrogative emphasis and extra syllables on important and final words. The Black women (who all seem to work as housekeepers) have deeper voices and poor diction. Except for references to Viagra and automobile accidents, the novel could be set in the antebellum South. Darlow keeps the tone light and quick, but the audio doesn't end quite fast enough. Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 7).

January 7, 2008
Julia Springer Murdoch has survived widowhood, scandals and her share of delightfully harebrained adventures in eight previous Miss Julia
outings; here she tackles a town’s worth of problems. Smarmy New Jersey developer Arthur Kessler plans to tear down the old Abbotsville, N.C., courthouse and replace it with condos, but more pressing is the fact that three of Julia’s friends’ husbands have decamped or gone missing, including Richard Stroud, who may have absconded with a great deal of money. Everyone’s turning to Julia for advice except for Richard’s wife, Helen, who’s getting too cozy for comfort as she cries on the shoulder of Miss Julia’s good-natured second husband, Sam. Julia rallies her friends to convince Kessler that Abbotsville is too full of Southern eccentricities for him, but those eccentricities may be too real for the plan to work. The memorably droll Ross has a gift for elevating such everyday matters as marital strife and the hazards of middle age to high comedy, while painting her beautifully drawn characters with wit and sympathy.