Southern Fried FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Southern Fried is a mystery filled with humor and believable people going about their sometimes bizarre business. Humor, atmosphere, and a challenging puzzle set the scene for the next big series." "Avery Andrews, the heroine of Southern Fried, has just been downsized from her job at a law office in a North Carolina city and has returned to her small hometown to lick her wounds and consider, with hesitation, trying to set up a law practice there. She quickly picks up a client or two. Immediately, the company building owned by one of her newfound clients is destroyed by arson, and the person whose body is found inside was quite possibly murdered." Meanwhile, an old high school classmate has told the entire county that he is hopelessly in love with Avery and makes several attempts at spectacular suicides to get her attention, each one of them carefully set up not to work. All in all, Avery finds that small-town life is not nearly so dull as she feared. And sometimes wishes it were.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Bodies abound and suspects lurk behind every bush in Pickens's assured debut, a cozy with some sharp edges (kinky sex and some S&M scenes not for the faint of heart). Fired from a prestigious, well-paid job in the big city, lawyer Avery Andrews slinks back home to sleepy Dacus, S.C., where she witnesses a strange spectacle: a grinning skull appears in the rear window of a car as divers raise it from the local lake. Avery begins to practice law in Dacus, and the owner of Garnet Mills, the town's chief employer, wishes to consult her on environmental issues. Then Melvin Bertram, absent from town since his wife's disappearance years earlier, returns and seeks Avery's advice. The car in the lake was his wife's, and he fears the skeleton is hers. Several days later the mill burns down and a charred body is discovered in the ashes. Telling her own story with charm and wry humor, Avery proves a likable and competent sleuth, even while coping with the suicide attempts of a smitten former classmate who "can't live without her." The natives of Dacus and the surrounding hills are convincing Southerners, and little gems of landscape description appear throughout ("The hoop-skirted branches of a magnolia tree, that staunch representative of the indestructible South, sheltered the entire right front yard"). This strong start augurs well for future books in the series. (Apr. 7) FYI: Southern Fried is the prepublication winner of this year's Malice Domestic Award for Best First Novel. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
After losing her job in Columbia, attorney Avery Andrews returns home to Dacus, SC, where everybody knows everybody else's business. She soon lands a corporate client, Garnet Mills, which is due for an inspection by government environmental authorities. Not surprisingly, the plant blows up, and vital documents are destroyed. Meanwhile, Avery becomes involved in a 15-year-old missing-persons case. Police have just recovered the body of the woman, a former Garnet employee, and are suspicious of her husband, who has just returned to town. Pickens's lively first mystery, winner of Minotaur's Malice Domestic Award for Best First Novel, features tidy plotting rounded out with gossipy humor, colorful characters, and Southern ethos. Highly recommended for most collections. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
This year's winner of the Malice Domestic Award for Best First Novel stars a lawyer whose scruples have gotten her bounced from her big-city firm back to her roots in Dacos, South Carolina. The world Avery Andrews returns to might as well be under glass in a history museum. Redneck suitor Donlee Griggs stages a series of phony homicides and suicides to get her attention. An outraged local historian wants her to defend a Confederate spy who's been slandered 150 years after the fact. Avery's clients seem scarcely more in touch with reality. Harrison Garnet, who wants her to hold his hand during an environmental inspection, seems oblivious to the possibility that the Garnet Mills could have polluted nearby streams, or that there'll be hell to pay if they have. And Melvin Bertram, Garnet's one-time Chief Financial Officer, seems more bemused than worried that the corpse the divers found while searching for Donlee's latest nonexistent victim is that of the wife who disappeared from his hearth and home years ago. Clearly, there's some bad medicine at Garnet Mills, but instead of thickening the stew, Pickens yields to the temptation to keep folding in new small-town zanies and bringing the old ones back for one more bow. If the plotting is slack and predictable, though, the world of Dacos, soaked in tart atmosphere, is well worth a visit, and probably the return visit broadly hinted at the fadeout.
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