Police detectin' in Ogeechee, Georgia, falls somewhere between Mayberry and "NYPD Blue," but force's newest member, Trudy Roundtree, is happy to be home again. True, the police chief is her cousin, and there's some family friction, what with her inheritance and all. A local murder fans the fires in more ways than one.
The victim is Reed Ritter. He was dead drunk when he took the blow that killed him. Then the killer set his house on fire. There was something about Reed that brought out the contrariness in everybody, and a messy divorce hadn't helped matters. In a small town secrets are hard to hide. But, as Trudy discovers, some are worth killing for....
What started out as a cute little book that had a catchy title and seemed seasonally appropriate turned into a good read that I heartily enjoyed. While a few of the characters annoyed me with their southern accents (spelled phonetically, at that), the whodunnit wasn't solved until the 11th hour and actually kept me guessing until the very end.