Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles Mystery Series
Susan Wittig Albert is the prolific
author of four mystery series. The China Bayles mysteries are my favorites.
This is not a series where it’s necessary to start with Book One – Wittig
Albert does a fine job of summarizing her detective’s background early on in
all recent books in the series.
China Bayles walked away from a
lucrative but life-sucking law practice in Houston to open Thyme and Seasons
Herb Shop in the small town of Pecan Springs in the beautiful Texas Hill
Country. Half her storefront is occupied by her best friend Ruby Wilcox’s
Crystal Cave, a new age shop where Ruby does astrology charts and sells tarot
cards, candles and crystals. Along with China’s various murder investigations
over twenty-three books, she’s managed to add to her life a house, a professional
detective husband, a stepson, an adopted niece (daughter of China’s
half-brother, son of her father and his secretary) and numerous animals. Every
book title is a plant, usually a medicinal herb, and every book is filled with
plant facts and fables and the ubiquitous recipes.
Long-lived mystery series sometimes
start feeling like the author is worn out, just writing to fulfill a book
contract. Two recent books in the China Bayles series are proof that Wittig
Albert just keeps getting better.
Bittersweet
Berkley Prime Crime, 2015
China is on
a rescue mission to help her mother Leatha cope with her stepfather’s heart
attack, just before the grand opening of their former game ranch as a bird
watchers’ retreat. Through her friendship with the area game warden, China gets
involved in the investigation of the murder of a local veterinarian and the
accidental (maybe) death of her mother’s assistant.
Bittersweet,
of course, figures prominently in the story. Bittersweet is the name of China’s
mother and stepfather’s ranch. The story begins with China fuming about the
spread of invasive Oriental bittersweet, Celastrus
orbiculatus, to the detriment of its native American cousin, C. scandens. How Wittig Albert ties
together bittersweet, trophy game farms and murder is fascinating.
Widow’s Tears
Berkley Prime Crime, 2013
Widow’s
Tears is an odd but captivating divergence from a great series. This book
is Ruby’s story. An old friend asks Ruby to help her clean out a house she’s
inherited and wants to turn into a bed and breakfast. But when Ruby arrives at
the empty house she discovers her friend’s ulterior motive for the invitation –
she wants Ruby to use her known-only-to-friends sixth sense to communicate with
the house’s resident ghost and ask it to leave.
Behind the house’s story is Wittig
Albert’s well-researched and dramatized tragedy of the 1900 Galveston hurricane
that destroyed the city and killed at least 8,000 people and many thousands
more animals, the deadliest natural disaster in United States history. Probably
everyone has heard of the great Galveston flood, even if only from the folk
song, Wasn’t That a Mighty Storm. Widow’s Tears puts faces on this
heartbreaking American story. And, yes, Widow’s tears is a medicinal herb.
