Cruel As the Grave

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A white stranger enters the black cemetery near Sheffield, Miss., when Lizzie Clouse is visiting the grave of her mother, Naresse, who had been murdered three years earlier. Then the man, Rory Hornsly, is found shot to death near his rented apartment. Sheriff Grover Bramlett, in his engaging third adventure A Homecoming for Murder finds the names of Naresse, Lizzie and her sister Shamona on a notepad in the man's rooms and soon links his new case to Naresse's unsolved murder. Naresse's decades-long affair with an unknown man of Sheffield is the key to both deaths, but the few who know about that aren't interested in talking to Bramlett. Next, an old friend of Naresse's is murdered; then someone takes a shot at Shamona. Bramlett questions Naresse's widower, who may be out for revenge; a wealthy black businessman who loved Naresse; and the businessman's sister, who had been the girlfriend of Naresse's husband. A college professor, his famous photographer wife and even the local preacher may be involved. The easygoing Bramlett is dealing with family problems of his own, notably his frail mother who hates living in a nearby nursing home. Armistead writes convincingly about Southern small-town police work and race relationsand about the powerful family loyalties and barely buried hatreds that motivate his characters. Aug.

Library Journal

Grover Bramlett, the easy-going sheriff of Sheffield, Mississippi, puzzles over connections between a recent shooting death and the three-year-old murder of Naresse. Naresse's daughter, digging a little on her own, discovers that her mother had a secret lover. Bramlett, too, looks for the man. Armistead's A Homecoming for Murder, LJ 9/1/95 clich-rich prose shows a frayed edge or two, but the narrative flows quickly and the small-world, Southern atmosphere provides a slightly decadent flavor that keeps the pages turning.

Stuart Miller

Chakchiuma County Sheriff Grover Bramlett returns for another adventure in Armistead's third story featuring this appealing lawman and his hometown of Sheffield, Mississippi. The violent death of a local businessman seems inexplicable, more so when it appears connected to the unsolved murder of Naresse Clouse a few years before. Since Naresse's daughter, Lizzie, is the close friend of his trusted deputy sheriff, Bramlett feels more personally involved than he'd like to be, especially since he knows Lizzie still resents his belief that her father had been Naresse's killer. The painful past is ever present here as Bramlett struggles to solve the crime, but not until two more murders are committed. Series fans won't be surprised to hear that "Cruel as the Grave" is a real page-turner--nor to learn that, yes, the sheriff is still working to improve his watercolor technique at the local community college.

Kirkus Reviews

This third Deep South procedural (A Homecoming for Murder, 1995, etc.) featuring Sheriff Grover Bramlett begins with a victim's-eye glimpse of a past murder. Naresse Clouse, a woman well-beloved by her husband and five children, is meeting her longtime lover in an abandoned barn when she's attacked. Neither her lover nor her killer is ever identified. We shift several years to the present, when a sleazy California dealmaker, recently repatriated to the rural Mississippi of his childhood, is fatally shot in his condo's parking lot. Overweight, genial Sheriff Bramlett—loves his wife, does watercolors of barns—discovers while interviewing large numbers of Chakchiuma County residents, both black and white, that the dead man had shown a strange, pressing interest in Naresse and her family. And the Clouse family, it turns out, had more secrets than the Sheriff ever suspected. The link between the deaths becomes slowly clear as Bramlett and his assistants push the buttons of businessmen, country preachers, college professors—and Naresse's daughter Lizzie, who's being courted by a stalwart sheriff's deputy. A deft portrait slowly emerges of a society in which everyone knows everyone, no one forgets anything, and racial injustice hasn't destroyed the human connection.

An appealing, locally grounded mystery marred only by a repetitive attention to irrelevant detail. Sheriff Bramlett's light is hidden under the bushel of Armistead's unsophisticated style.