Another Column at MyShelf.Com

Between the Pages, Special Blog
A Mystery Column
By Dennis Collins

A TOUGH NUT TO KILL
by Elizabeth Lee

When I began writing A Tough Nut to Kill I wasn’t sure a pair of grandmother and granddaughter protagonists was going to work as my investigators. At first I thought: Lindy’s in her twenties, Miss Amelia’s seventy-seven. A couple of generations apart. I told myself: no interests in common—one’s an educated botanist, the other an elderly southern woman whose days consist of baking pecan pies for The Nut House, the family outlet for the pecans grown on their ranch near Riverville, Texas.

Lindy spends the warming spring days with her head in a botany book or tending the new species of pecan tree she’s developing out in her greenhouse, while Miss Amelia gossips and hands out advice left and right to the townsfolk.

I had to find where the women came together, were similar, shared interests, shared common goals.

And it was right there in front of my nose. Of course they shared the best of things, like most grandmothers and granddaughters do. I found things that went so far beyond daily events, beyond education, beyond interests, the music they listened to, the friends they had. Two women. Related. Tied by blood, by love of family, deep love and respect for each other, for friends and family. Two women who shared a thirst for justice coming from past injustices they both had suffered.

It was going to be all right. When Lindy found Uncle Amos, the black sheep of the Blanchard family who had disappeared over a year ago, dead on the cement floor of her greenhouse and then a family member was charged with the murder, it was no giant guess that this pair of southern women would get out there and chase down old lies and old enemies, hide evidence when they needed to, or do a line dance or two at the Barking Coyote Saloon if it will get them information from a bar maid. From Riverville to a rehab facility in Houston to the offices of a Columbus, Texas, private detective, they dig up old murders, ferret out old injustices, and face down a killer.

Granddaughter and grandmother—southern womanhood at its best.



Feb 2014 Berkley/NAL Blogs