"It is good to have Peggy Webb back doing what she does best -- making us laugh-out-loud while enjoying a good read!"
Elvis and The Dearly Departed
By: Peggy Webb
Genres: Mystery Amateur Sleuth
Posted: February 25, 2009
Callie Valentine Jones is in a custody battle with her soon- to-be ex-husband, Jack, over Elvis, a failed show dog because one ear is longer than the other. Callie still loves Jack, but he is too mysterious and only Elvis knows what the man does for a living, and he ain't talking. Callie owns a beauty salon and pours all of her profits into Ruby Nell's gambling habit -- Ruby Nell is Callie's mother. Not willingly, of course, but she just doesn't know how to say 'no'. Her best friend is also her cousin, Lovie, who owns a catering business, Lovie's Lucious Eats, but she is the hottest thing on the menu. Uncle Charlie is probably the most stable one in the Valentine family; he is a mortician and owns the Eternal Rest Funeral Home whose motto is "Let the Good Times Roll".
When the late Leonard Laton, M. D. leaves the majority of his real estate holdings and his money to a Las Vegas dancer named Bubbles Malone, it naturally upsets all of his greedy relatives. After the viewing, the good doctor's body disappears, so it is fortunate that the funeral is being delayed until one of his daughters can arrive from the Serengetti. It is up to Callie and Lovie to find and retrieve the body. Sounds like a Road Trip to me.
ELVIS AND THE DEARLY DEPARTED is a hoot, and is full of bawdy humor, colorful, appealing and mostly quirky characters, and an offbeat storyline that is reminiscent of "A Week-End at Bernies" -- but our version would star Callie and Lovie doing their impressions of that New Jersey bounty hunter and her sidekick.
This is the first book in the "Elvis Mysteries" and we can look forward to ELVIS AND THE GRATEFUL DEAD later this year. It is good to have Peggy Webb back doing what she does best -- making us laugh-out-loud while enjoying one of her stories!
Book Summary
They say you can't get to Heaven without passing through
the Eternal Rest Funeral Home. And no one gets into Eternal
Rest without passing muster with Elvis-the basset hound
who's convinced he's the reincarnation of the King of Rock
`n' Roll. Brewing up a big ol' pitcher of Mississippi
mystery, Peggy Webb's delightful new series is as
intoxicating as the Delta breeze.
Normally, Callie
Valentine Jones spends her days fixing up the hairdos of the
dead, but when the corpse of local, prominent physician Dr.
Leonard Laton goes missing, it's bad for business. So Callie
and her oversexed cousin Lovie (Eternal Rest's resident wake
caterer) have no choice but to go in hot pursuit of the
recently embalmed, last seen bound for Vegas by way of
downtown Tupelo.
Now Elvis may be nothin' but a hound
dog, but he knows a mystery when he smells one. But keeping
his human mom from wandering off the trail isn't easy when
she's back in the arms of her on-again, off-again ex, Jack.
Not to mention the angry mourners squabbling over the estate
of the late doctor inside the not-so-restful halls of
Eternal Rest. Or the French poodle sniffing around for a
hunk of Elvis' burning love.
In Vegas, Callie and
Lovie hit the jackpot when they find the dearly departed
inside a freezer owned by his showgirl mistress, Bubble
Malone. But they're luck runs out when Bubble decides to
join her man in the afterlife. With the poisonous Laton
family tree providing plenty of rotten suspects, Callie's
determined to crack this case-with a little help from that
irresistible piece of man she used to call her husband-and
have a killer singing "Jailhouse Rock" in time for her next
haircutting appointment.
by: Peggy Webb
Kensington
October 1, 2008
On Sale: October 1, 2008
Featuring: Callie Valentine Jones
304 pages
ISBN: 075822589X
EAN: 9780758225894
Kindle: B002MTM3FM
Hardcover / e-Book