"Good mystery with a 1940s style to it."

Ivory Keys, jazz legend, gifted pianist and owner of the blues club, Playin' the Bones, is dead. And the hunt is on for his murderer. The police have arrested Scott Hampton, a blues singer and Ivory's protégé. Racial prejudices muddy the waters in this Southern town - Ivory was black and Scott is white. PI Sarah Booth Delaney is called in by Ivory's wife to prove that Scott didn't do it.

Sarah is walking into a powder keg that could explode in her face. Racial tension is high, and when two bikers from Scott's former life enter the picture, things get nasty. Lust also enters the picture through a somewhat-crazy native daughter, who's obsessed with Scott and willing to do anything to get him to realize he loves her. Sarah's own heart is involved, making her a target for some really nasty customers.

The 40s-flavor to this story is intriguing, and the well- constructed plot leaves you in the dark until the end. Haines creates well-defined characters flavored by Southern idiosyncrasies. The love interests leave you hanging a bit, but the story stands well on its own.

Reviewed by Lynne Dillon
Courtesy Old Book Barn Gazette
Posted March 9, 2003

Summary

Sarah Booth Delaney is no ordinary P.I. A born-and-bred Mississippi belle, she struggles to hold on to her family's plantation and keeps up a running conversation with the ghost of her great-great-grandmother's nanny, a busybody who decks herself out in a stunning new outfit every day-- and schemes to save Sarah Booth from spinsterhood. Not one to wait around for a white knight, Sarah takes on the kind of cases no one else will touch. Like trying to exonerate a man accused of murdering Sunflower County's most popular musician. The two men met in prison: Ivory Keys, a gifted black blues pianist, and Scott Hampton, a rich white boy turned racist. Somewhere between the two men, a spark was lit. And by the time he came out of the joint, Scott Hampton had not only renounced his racist ways, he had learned to play a blues guitar that made grown women go weak in the knees. So why did Scott plunge a steel shank into his mentor's chest? Ivory's widow doesn't think he did, and she's paid Sarah Booth to prove it. No easy task, especially since the delicate racial harmony of Sunflower County is threatening to come undone under the heat of Sarah Booth's investigation. For a woman feeling a little heat of her own--navigating between a rich, available businessman, a married lawman with a waffling heart, and the sexy bluesman who is angling to become much more than her client--this case is taking dangerous twists. A town's slumbering passions have awakened with a jolt, a matchmaking ghost is dressed up like Jackie O, and Sarah Booth is caught between her need to know the truth and the consequences it will have on her town--and on her life. With riveting suspense and a sparkling cast of unforgettable characters, Carolyn Haines has woven a rich portrait of a part of America grappling with its past, its illusions, and its hopes. Crossed Bones is the most dazzling work yet from a uniquely gifted writer.