At Farberville High, the curriculum includes reading, writing… and murder. Bookstore owner and amateur sleuth Claire Malloy finds herself in the thick of it when she agrees to go undercover to investigate a possible case of embezzlement.
When someone sabotages Jim Bob's grocery store with tainted tamale sauce, resulting in 23 cases of food poisoning and a sudden death, Police Chief Arly Hanks finds that her own mother, Rudy Dee, is one of the suspects. "This may be one of the funniest mysteries written in a long time…"-Ocala Star-Banner.
Arly Hanks – the wildest chief of police in the Ozarks – has finally met her match. To her horror, she's been cajoled into chaperoning a group of ten hormonally challenged teens on a youth group camp out, along with the mayor's wife, the high school shop teacher, and preacher Brother Verber. Bunking with the crew is bad enough, but things get even hairier when one of the campers stumbles upon the body of a white-robed woman with a shaved head. And before Arly Hanks can do a head count, she finds herself hindered by a cast of crazies, while she tracks down a spacey cult whose initiation ritual could be a real killer.
Arly (aka Ariel) Hanks, Chief of Police of Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755), has been known to break out in hives just thinking about Manhattan. Her idea of a good time is running a speed trap at the edge of town, stomping around the ridge looking for Raz Buchanan's still, and having the blue plate special at Ruby Bee's Bar and Grill on Saturday night. So the last place on earth Arly wanted to be was back in Manhattan with its bright lights, memories of her nasty divorce… and, doggone it anyway, a most inconvenient murder. The week started out just ...
Police Chief Arly Hanks finds her small town, Maggody, has some new inhabitants when she returns from vacation. Soon, Robin Buchanon, local prostitute and moonshiner, disappears, and Arly finds her bloody body at the edge of a marijuana field.
Maggody police chief Arly Hanks investigates the death of a local resident who fell from an eighth-floor hotel balcony while on an Elvis Presley Pilgrimage to Memphis.
While investigating a sorority member's death at her daughter's college, Claire Malloy discovers the sorority sisters are participants in many bizarre rituals and illegal activities-the kind Claire would not want her daughter to be caught dead in.
