Dell Books (Paperback), ISBN 0-440-23517-0
An amazing debut mystery novel, with the accent on "maze," Sing It To Her Bones offers an incredible tangle of clues, suspects and personal problems. Talley leads the unwary reader down diverse paths, all interesting, all holding a red herring or two and all wonderfully written. Sing It To Her Bones also introduces the most unlikely amateur sleuth in the genre, Hannah Ives.  

We meet the emotionally conflicted, temporarily uncertain Hannah in the midst of her recovery from a radical mastectomy and chemotherapy. Nearly bald, skinny, newly fired from her job, feeling unlovable and unlovely, she goes to spend some time with her sister-in-law, hoping to sort things out and do a little healing.  

Taking her sister-in-law's dog and herself for some much-needed exercise, Hannah discovers a body in a cistern (an in-ground container to catch and preserve rainwater). It proves to be the body of a local girl missing for several years. Forensics determines the girl was murdered. Because of numerous factors in her own life, Hannah takes a personal interest in discovering who committed the crime and why, and thereby hangs the tale.  

Complication piles on top of complication, leading Hannah deeper and deeper into a maze of murder, hate, love, physical attraction and dire danger. Even serious personal troubles -- an accusation that could end her husband's career and possibly their marriage -- doesn't deter Hannah from attempting to solve the crime. In fact, the investigation may be Hannah's best escape. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Not only a great mystery, Sing It To Her Bones grants an inside, very compassionate, look at a woman who survived breast cancer but isn't sure where she goes from there. It is also an honest book, hiding nothing: emotion, pain or anger.  

I would recommend this book to everyone who longs to read an intelligently written mystery with an incredibly complex plot and a heroine who deserves another mystery to solve. Failing that, how about another great mystery from the same talented author?  

Patricia White  

Patricia White is the Sapphire Award-winning author of A Wizard Scorned. Her current book, the western Edwina Parkhurst, Spinster, is available from Hard Shell Word Factory.

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