In the past 4.5 years living in the Des Moines area, I discovered that both Des Moines and Urbandale have really awesome libraries. However, never being a resident of West Des Moines until now, I had never been in the town's library. It's not too far from my new house nestled in between the police station, city hall, and Valley football stadium on Mills Civic Pkwy. After filling out my information and providing proof of my residence in West Des Moines, I had my card. Rows and rows of books filled the rooms leaving me, as usual, overwhelmed by all the options. I keep a list of books on my iPhone so I can remember all the ones I want to read. I typed a few of them into the electronic card catalog to find they were checked out. I was looking for a light, fun read to take with me on my vacation to San Diego, so half the books on my list didn't fit the criteria. I ended up wondering the stacks until I stumbled upon To Live and Die in Dixie by Mary Kay Andrews. It's part of a series of classic whodunnit novels similar to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series (One for the Money). The main character - Callahan Garrity - is a former Atlanta police officer turned P.I. and house cleaning company owner. On a house cleaning call, one of her employees finds the body of a murdered teenager. The owner of the home hires her to recover the items stolen in the robbery while the victim's sister hires her to solve the murder. The book was wrote in the 1990s so Garrity didn't have a smartphone or Google to help her in the investigation. Still, she caught several breaks and pieced it all together before the cops. Unfortunately, the ending wrapped up too nicely for me. When her case was about to fall apart, the murderers tried killing Garrity and ended up getting caught after setting themselves on fire in the process. Now that I'm back from vacation, I probably won't read the other novels in the series. But it was a fine read while on the beach and poolside. |