Patricia Ann, her husband Fred, and Mary Alice are back from a holiday trip to Warsaw, Poland, where they visited Patricia Ann’s daughter Haley. Not only is Patricia Ann greeted with a serious case of jet lag, but the sisters’ cousin, Pukey Lukey, has been frantically trying to reach them. Pukey got his unfortunate nickname due to a childhood tendency towards carsickness, but now Pukey has a more serious matter to contend with. His wife of forty years, Virginia, has left him for a snake-handling preacher that was painting their house!

The sisters agree to take Pukey up to Chandler Mountain, near Birmingham, Alabama, to try and find his missing wife. But they’re in for a shock when they stumble across murder. Pukey goes in the church to investigate, and fails to come out. The sisters follow after him only to find Pukey lying on the floor unconscious with a deep gash in his head, and a pretty young red-headed girl dead from a broken neck. Who attacked Pukey? Who killed the girl? And where is the missing Virginia and the preacher turned housepainter?

The investigation gets off to an amusing start, when the local sheriff on the scene falls head over heals for the over-the-top Mary Alice. The more outrageous of the sisters, her budding courtship with a man she swears looks like Cary Grant (Patricia Ann sees more of a resemblance to Willard Scott!), provides several laughs. But even with the authorities on the case, there is still plenty of snooping for the sisters to do.

As with a previous installment of this series I reviewed for The Mystery Reader, what I found most enjoyable was the relationship between Patricia Ann and Mary Alice. I continually found myself thinking that these two sisters could really exist in real life. While they are complete opposites in almost every way, their love for each other and their bantering relationship makes this series a true delight.

I was reading along, enjoying myself thoroughly, until I got to the end of the story. Nothing is more irritating in a mystery than when a character just explains away a dead body by saying something like, “Oh, so and so killed that person.” That’s exactly what happens with Murder Carries a Torch. Like a lot of mysteries, there isn’t just one dead body lying around. There’s another murder in the story, and this second murder is the one that is lightly explained away. I found this particularly annoying and it really dampened my overall contentment with the book as a whole.

However, up until those last six pages, I was really enjoying this latest entry in an entertaining series. Even with putting in an eight hour day at work, I still managed to devour this story in a day. Readers who like down-home atmosphere, and light-hearted laughs will still find plenty that appeals to them.

--Wendy Crutcher