If I find an author whose books I enjoy I will search for
anything else they may have written or might be writing. Albert’s series of China Bayles mysteries has
been a favorite so I picked up this book hoping for good things. Reading the
book jacket and finding that this is a new series set in the Depression had me
second guessing my choice. But Albert pulled it off. Her research into the time period created a
highly believable 1930s small Southern town. The people inhabiting her book are
characters you might almost know from oft-told family stories: the spinster
librarian, the assistant who knows more than her boss, and the small town
newspaper man looking for a big story.
Albert’s 1930s world seems pretty close to what my
grandparents and others have told me about it. So I was able to suspend belief
and enter her world rather easily. The Darling Dahlias is a garden club. The
Confederate Rose is a common name for a hibiscus and the name of a female
Confederate spy during the Civil War. The weaving of the two into a cozy mystery
of earlier times had me turning pages and enjoying the experience. I’ll be
reading the first book in the series as soon as it arrives by request to my library.
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