Elizabeth Spann Craig. A Dyeing Shame: Death at the Beauty Box. Pineland, FL: Palmland Publishing, 2006.

The fictional town of Bradley, North Carolina, is an old Southern town in which the weekly hair appointment is an eagerly anticipated outing for women such as Myrtle Clover, the octogenarian protagonist in Spann’s first novel. Unfortunately, Myrtle’s routine now has a snag: Tami, her hairdresser, has just been murdered. A few months earlier, everyone would have been sad about her death, but Tami’s recent lapse into alcoholism made her bitter and unpleasant. Myrtle, the literature-quoting former English teacher, sees this unfortunate death as an opportunity to break her boredom and to prove to her son, the Bradley police chief, that her mind is still sharp. When Myrtle finds her best friend and neighbor, Edna, bludgeoned to death in her garden, the mystery hits too close to home. Myrtle puts the clues together using her favorite soap opera, Tomorrow’s Promise, as a guide. Finally she realizes the motive for her friends’ deaths and helps her son solve the case.

A Dyeing Shame is Elizabeth Spann Craig’s first book in her Myrtle Clover mystery series.

Check this title’s availability and the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Craig, Elizabeth Spann, Mystery, Novels in Series, Novels Set in Fictional Places

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