Sun 18 Dec 2022
Reviewed by Barry Gardner: NANCY BELL – Biggie and the Poisoned Politician.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[5] Comments
NANCY BELL – Biggie and the Poisoned Politician. Biggie Weatherford #1, hardcover, St. Martin’s, 1996; paperback, 1997.
And here we have a first novel by an Austin, Texas lady who is a sorority house-mother at the University of Texas, and who is at work on the next Biggie Weatherford novel.
Biggie Weatherford is the wealthiest woman in the small East Texas town of Job’s Crossing, and somewhat more than semi-eccentric. When the city fathers decide to put a landfill next to her farm and ancestral graveyard she rises up in righteous wrath, which is further fueled by a strip-mining operation sniffing around the area. But before she can accomplish anything a boarder has his car blown up, a city official is killed, and a mysterious stranger shows up in town.
Well, they don’t come any cozier than this-pure fluff and a yard wide, but fortunately not very long (200 pages). It’s even got a recipe at the end, for God’s sake. And I actually sort of (*blush*) enjoyed it. It’s narrated by the lead’s 12 year old grandson in a fairly authentic rural Texas voice, which along with the characters was most of its appeal for me. They were painted with a very broad brush, but anyone who’s lived in a small town won’t have trouble recognizing a few of them.
Bell stumbles once or twice with the voice (a regional first person voice is hard to write for 200 pages, even if you’re raised to speak it) and has a cat doing something a cat wouldn’t do, and the plot is the usual cozy silliness, but if you’re not expecting too much going in, you might be pleasantly surprised.
An aside — I’ll be interested to see if she catches any heat from the P.C. crowd for not only portraying a black woman as a maid, but having her have a shiftless husband and be a voodoo woman as well.
The Biggie Weatherford series —
1. Biggie and the Poisoned Politician (1996)
2. Biggie and the Mangled Mortician (1997)
3. Biggie and the Fricasseed Fat Man (1998)
4. Biggie and the Meddlesome Mailman (1999)
5. Biggie and the Quincy Ghost (2001)
6. Biggie and the Devil Diet (2002)
December 18th, 2022 at 9:14 pm
Not a book for most readers of the blog, I strongly suspect. It might help, though, if you’re from Texas, as Barry was.
December 19th, 2022 at 9:58 am
This sounds like a story I once read. Can’t remember the name or author but it featured a Texas matriarch, was a cozy and may have been narrated by a son or daughter. I think I would have remembered a character with the ungodly name of “Biggie.” Since I prefer cozys over the gritter type of detective stories I think I would have enjoyed this.
December 19th, 2022 at 10:27 pm
The same two thoughts as you, beb. There are not many mysteries in which the leading character is a Texas matriarch with cozy overtones. But if I ever read a book with Biggie in the title, it would be difficult to forget.
December 19th, 2022 at 7:51 pm
I think I’ll take my East Texas Bill Crider, Edward Mathis, James Lee Burke, and Joe Lansdale style.
December 19th, 2022 at 10:24 pm
Obviously two sides of East Texas mystery fiction, then. Shall the two ever meet?