Glory by Diana Hannon Forrester

Lucy and Ethel would have had a ball (pun intended) adapting this story to an episode of I Love Lucy.  And like the famed twosome in the beloved television series, the wacky team of females in Glory, by Ohio author, Dianna Hannon Forrester makes a case that good girlfriends, like good husbands, are hard to come by.  I’m talking about the kind of girlfriend who will go through anything for, and with, you, even if it puts her in the line of fire of a demented killer.  Kate Marcum, best friend of Glory Pruitt, passes every test, and more, of such a girlfriend in this entertaining book.  While a mystery novel, it is at the same time a lighthearted and fun romp with a beautifully crafted setting and a cast of captivating characters, especially Glory and Kate, the pair of them prattling in snappy dialogue and conjuring harebrained schemes while all around them people are dropping like flies by baffling means in the small, Central Ohio town of Camden.

                Just to give you a sneak peak at the canny writing of Mrs. Forrester, this is the opening paragraph of the book: 

My name is Glory Pruitt.  The Glory came from my father who was a Methodist minister.  He was one of the Central Conference’s worst ministers of all time, but God’s glory was his bread and butter.  He’s retired now and living homeless on a beach in Florida.  The Pruitt came from Charlie whom I met at the Ohio State University in 1976.  I was eighteen at the time and Charlie was a senior in agriculture, which I think they still teach at Ohio State, even today.  Charlie was recently buried in the Greenlawn Cemetery south of town.  I’m not convinced of natural causes.

                Day after day, a shame-faced and bewildered Glory hides away in her house and drains Charlie’s wine cellar of his stash of vintage reds and whites and tries to wrap her head around the fact of Charlie’s having dropped dead of a presumed heart attack while in the bed of one of her girlfriends.  Despite Kate’s daily drop-ins, her mind fruitful with ideas for outings, nothing pries Glory out of the house, nothing but the news one day of the suspicious death of the friend in whose bed Charlie had taken his final tumble.  But was it his first two-timing tumble? Glory and Kate begin to wonder, as clues, like the bodies, begin to pile up, hints that Charlie was up to much more no good than being a no good husband.

                As Lucy and Ethel would have done in their high-jinx ways, Glory and Kate uncover the villain in this one, and it proves that one way or another, it never pays to be undercover under the wrong covers.  My prediction is that you will lose yourself between the covers of this delightful book.  Therefore, unlike Charlie’s inconvenient pastime, this is a diversion I highly recommend.    

Glory in paperback is available at www.McDiggsPublishing.com

The direct link to the paperback or eBook of Linda Lee Greene's latest novel, Guardians and Other Angels is at http://www.amazon.com/Guardians-Other-Angels-Linda-Greene/dp/1897512562/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338336762&sr=8-1

To view an online exhibition of Linda Lee Greene's artwork, please log onto www.gallery-llgreene.com