by Barbara Neely (Author), Lisa Reneé Pitts (Narrator), Tantor Audio (Publisher)

An Audiobook Review

“Blanche White is a plump, feisty, middle-aged African-American housekeeper working for the genteel rich in North Carolina.” She gets caught writing a bum check (because her bad-news employer didn’t pay her) and goes before a judge. In a fluke bit of black magic (well, kind of), she escapes a 30-day jail sentence and goes… “on the lam.”

Then by another not-quite-accident, she finds herself in a new temporary position as housekeeper for a family going away to the country for a week. Perfect, she thinks. Out of sight, out of mind to the Sheriff.  But strange things are going on in that house and her “African 7th sense” warns her to be on the look out.  Sure enough, Things go very wrong and as bodies begin to pile up, it’s only her and the family’s 24-year-old, sort of Down Syndrome young man who are left to sort things out.

Barbara Neely‘s first Blanche White book is an interesting story, often suspenseful, and even tender in places. There is some profanity, black trash talk, and quite a bit of black outrage from the servant class, that fits the era it was written in (1990’s).  I didn’t mind it, and actually kind of like how feisty Blanche was. The mystery was solved in a hair-raising, totally surprising scene which I was SURE would turn out very badly. Whew!

I’ll read the next book in the series.

4 stars.