Susan Wittig Albert

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.