March 29, 2010
Set in 1997, Fowler's folksy 14th Benni Harper mystery (after 2007's Tumbling Blocks
) finds the avid quilter, museum curator, and reluctant sleuth readying herself for the annual San Celina (Calif.) County Mid-State Fair. Racial tensions revolving around the fair's first black general manager, Levi Clark; Levi's half-white daughter, Jazz; and Jazz's various suitors stir the plot. So, too, does the visit from Arkansas of Benni's great-aunt, Garnet Wilcox. Garnet and her sister, Dove, Benni's grandmother, get along “like two bobcats trapped in a burning outhouse.” A valued African-American quilt stolen from a fair exhibit and a corpse in another exhibit add fuel to the fire. Fowler's congenial mix of humor (prickly, surprising Garnet applies lessons learned from mystery books and cop shows), folklore (the history of black cloth dolls), and murder makes this Agatha Award–winning series as much fun to visit as a county fair and a likely ribbon winner.
April 15, 2010
The state fair provides the bustling backdrop to Benni Harper Ortiz's (Tumbling Blocks, 2007, etc.) latest brush with murder.
Although Benni is married to police chief Gabe Ortiz, it's her friend Detective"Hud" Hudson's department that has jurisdiction when Benni and her Aunt Garnet find a body in the Family Farm Exhibition Hall at the San Celina County Mid-State Fair. The late Calvin Jones was one of several young men dating Jazz, a biracial young woman whose African-American father, Levi Clark, is a controversial appointment as fair manager. Calvin had a tough life. His recent involvement with a local skinhead group provides a possible explanation for his death. So does his rivalry with Jazz's other suitors, hotheaded Dodge Burnside and nice Justin Piebald, whose sleazy father owns a chain of profitable used-car lots. Egged on by formerly straitlaced, suddenly secretive Aunt Garnet, Benni feels impelled to solve the mystery. Sordid letters to Levi, the theft of an African-American quilt used to wrap Cal's body and racist graffiti painted on Benni's house only make her more determined to catch the criminal who's sullying her long, happy memories of the fair.
Fowler evokes all the sights, sounds and smells of the fair, from deep-fried pickles to midway rides to animal contests, while providing a worthy puzzle for redoubtable Benni.
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May 1, 2010
Its time for Californias San Celina Mid-State Fair, and Benni Harper Ortiz, a member of the fairs Booster Buddies, is heavily involved in its activitiesboth as a volunteer and as a participant. When the replica of the famous Harriet Powers quilt disappears from the quilt exhibit, and a fairgoer is found dead in another one of the exhibits, Benni investigates, with the help of her great-aunt Garnet (think of a refined Grandma Mazur). As the two persevere in their search for perps and motives (Is someone upset by the choice of an African American as general manager of the fair?), Benni is dumbfounded by the change in her auntfrom prim-and-proper matron to someone who has clearly been watching too many crime shows on TV. Framed by the sights and sounds of a western state fair, the novel mixes mystery, humor, and a perceptive look at racial issues in California farm country.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)