Search - O Little Town of Maggody (Arly Hanks, Bk 7)

Great, funny.. cozy mystery.. joan hess is a great writer

ISBN 0451404572 �" You know those people who tell sort of bad jokes and find themselves wildly amusing, while all you can do is roll your eyes? That's this Joan Hess book for me. And surely someone out there finds her amusing, because someone's buying the books �" but I'm just rolling my eyes.

Arly's always got her hands full in Maggody, but this Christmas things are getting a little more hectic. The town is slowly dying, but there's hope on the horizon in the person of Matt Montana, Maggody's own prodigal son. He's serving his own career and the people of Maggody would benefit from a bit of tourism… so Matt's on his way to town. The problem is that Matt's Aunt Adele has gone missing. Arly is also trying to riddle out the moving city limits sign, deal with Dahlia's jealousy and suspicions about what Kevin's up to, the return of Hammett and a myriad of other goings-on in Maggody.

Arly Hanks reminds me of ISBN 0425182908 Isle of Dogs, but not quite as awful. In fact, not awful at all, just… dumb. The same “this is funny, really, you should laugh” feeling runs through both books, but they're just not �" to me. The characters are so stereotypical that they're miles beyond amusing and closer to stupid. If you enjoy the tongue-in-cheek style, lightly mocking the mystery genre, you're going to enjoy Hess, and fans of Arly Hanks will like the book far more than I. Hess herself gave me a quote I couldn't pass up: “Writers …they're so goofy nobody cares what they do.”

- AnnaLovesBooks

This book has some tears on the front cover.

From Publishers Weekly: "Hess follows Maggody in Manhattan with another romp, the seventh, featuring the good folks from the small Arkansas town, pop. 755. When it's discovered that country music star Matt Montana was not only born in Maggody but plans to visit his birthplace to give a Christmas concert, the town goes wild with hopes of cashing in on a native son's good fortune. His old home, now a rundown shack, is refurbished, and plans are made to open "The Official Matt Montana Souvenir Shoppe." Matt announces that he will visit his only surviving relative, Aunt Adele. But then Adele disappears from her nursing home and Chief of Police Arly Hanks (she is the entire department), who returned to her hometown from Manhattan, begins to suspect a kidnapping. While Arly searches for Adele, the Nashville crowd arrives and the denizens of Maggody produce a stand-in for the missing auntie. Arly is wrapping up the old woman's mysterious disappearance when she discovers that the body of a murdered record company executive has replaced the mannequin in the window of Mrs. Jim Bob's General Store. Untangling the motives of Matt's entourage as well as the wacky reasoning of her townspeople keeps Arly on her toes for another uproarious visit to the backwoods."
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --