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.
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