Miss Julia Paints The Town
Ann B. Ross
Reviewed by J. A. Jance
I spent some time in Abbotsville, North Carolina, this week. No, I didn't REALLY travel to North Carolina because Abbotsville, although it seems real enough, isn't a real place. It's the fictional home of Ann B. Ross's engaging heroine, Miss Julia Springer Murdoch, an upright Presbyterian dowager who, as my mother would have said, is a caution.
Miss Julia Paints the Town is Miss Julia's ninth fictional outing, and I've read them all. In this one she is pitted against a wily out-of-town developer who is determined to tear down Abbotsville's architectural crown jewel, an old abandoned courthouse that's long on style and short on structural integrity. Mr. Kessler wants to replace the court house with a Main Street interloper, an eight story condo building that he envisions as filled with out-of-towner retirees who will regard the locals as affable, easy-going Southerners, on the order of a quaint aboriginal tribe.
Anyone familiar with small town America can be at home in Abbotsville. There's the hidebound pastor who's long on scriptural quotes and short on the milk of human kindness. There's a flurry of husbands, who, although they should all be well beyond the age of mid-life crises, suddenly decamp from hearth and home leaving their abandoned and mystified wives, Miss Julia's lifelong friends, to figure out how to get along without them.
It's a fun confection where Miss Julia, in letting go of some of her own hide-bound ideas and social prejudices, learns that her worst enemy may well be the guy she helped elect to be a county commissioner and her best ally may be the flashy-dressing trailer trash that she's always thought beneath her contempt.
Yes, Miss Julia is back, and I, for one, am one happy camper.
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About the Reviewer:
J.A. Jance is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-eight mysteries, including the popular J.P. Beaumont, Joanna Brady, and Ali Reynolds series. Her most recent book, an Ali Reynolds mystery, is HAND OF EVIL.
Visit her online at www.jajance.com.
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