MYSTERIES: Inexpensive entertainment for tight budgets

If you're looking for some murderous diversion after the holidays but find your budget stressed from seasonal gift-giving, cheer up.

These five mysteries are all original -- they are not reprints of hardcover books -- and all come in the form of mass-market paperbacks, so your wallet won't fall victim to killer prices.

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In the South, it's called "tombstone twitch," a profound interest -- some would say obsession -- in genealogy. And Patricia Sprinkle, who grew up in North Carolina and Florida and lives in Georgia, puts genealogy to entertaining use in her "family-tree" series.

The third entry, Daughter of Deceit ($6.99, Avon, 356 pages), finds series protagonist Katharine Murray redoing her home after the serious vandalism that took place in this book's predecessor. But she's soon drawn into a mystery involving Atlanta socialite Bara Holcomb Weidenauer, whose 15-years-younger husband, Foley Weidenauer, is divorcing her, trying to sell her late father's architectural firm and attempting to take half of everything she owns.

To try to keep them away from Foley, Bara has stashed her dad's personal effects in a storage unit, and when she comes across his military medals there, she enlists Katharine's help in learning more about them. What Katharine finds out shakes Bara to the core, and the recovering alcoholic falls off the wagon and into big trouble.

There's murder, of course, but the appeal of this series transcends Sprinkle's intricate plots, and "Daughter of Deceit" is no exception. There's Katharine, a mannered if feisty woman, her relatives, a wealth of local Atlanta color (particularly Buckhead) and a cast of Buckheadites whom Sprinkle draws with deadly accuracy.

Genealogy, to be sure, concerns matters of life and death, but Sprinkle turns that cliché on its head in this thoughtful novel, a worthy successor to the two previous books in the series.

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One of the skills a young reporter must develop is how to tell a complicated story without befuddling the casual reader or condescending to the serious one.

It's a proficiency at which former journalist Karen E. Olson, a graduate of Hollins University in Roanoke, shines. And she proves it again in Shot Girl (320 pages, Obsidian, $6.99), the fourth entry in her series featuring Annie Seymour, a crime reporter for the fictional New Haven Herald in Connecticut.

As the story opens, Annie, who's in her late 30s, is at the Rouge Lounge for a colleague's bachelorette party when gunfire is heard outside. Annie is taken aback to find her former husband, the bar's manager, lying dead on the sidewalk.

Working with -- and sometimes against -- her former boyfriend, cop Tom Behr, and her current one, private detective Vinny DeLucia, Annie finds herself entangled with a male stripper, a professor, a couple of shot girls (they buy liquor shots at bars, resell them at cost and rake in the tips), a slick preacher and some street kids.

Olson excels at plotting -- with liberal doses of humor -- and Annie grows more fascinating, and more human, with each novel. This one's a winner from Page One.

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In the early 1970s, the mayor of Cleveland declined an invitation to a White House state dinner because it was his wife's bowling night. But maybe he had a premonition of misfortune that didn't include a 7-10 split.

Julie Hyzy serves up a spicy tale in Hail to the Chef (336 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $7.99), the second in her series featuring Olivia "Ollie" Paras, the White House's executive chef.

When the mansion's chief electrician is electrocuted, and when the president's nephew is found shot to death, the intuitive and observant Ollie can't let either tragedy go as accident or suicide. With determination and grit, she helps the authorities crack the case -- but not before finding herself in as much peril as a turkey at Thanksgiving.

Complete with recipes and a trove of White House lore -- as well as a credible storyline and a winning heroine -- "Hail to the Chef" marks another culinary conquest for Hyzy.

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Gatorland, Dinosaur World, Cypress Gardens -- they're just a few examples of old Florida kitsch, and that's new travel writer Mallory Marlowe's initial assignment in Murder Packs a Suitcase (304 pages, Bantam, $6.99), the first in a projected series by Cynthia Baxter.

Mallory, a recent widow with a semi-empty nest, lands a job with a travel magazine, and her editor promptly sends her to Florida. Not long after she arrives, another journalist, Phil Diamond, is found dead in a fake waterfall, a fake Tiki spear nearby. Mallory, who has had two run-ins with him, is the cops' prime suspect. Determined to clear her name, she learns that each other member of the group had a good motive to want Phil dead.

All comes right, of course, but not before Mallory sees that not all is sunny and bright in the Sunshine State. With a character as appealing as veterinarian Jessica Popper in her "Reigning Cats & Dogs" series, a plausible plot and a spot-on portrayal of Florida both old and Disneyfied, Baxter will have you hankering for another excursion with Mallory.

. . .

One lost her husband to death, one to a nursing home and one to a floozy. But the three middle-age women banded together to form the Cackleberry Club -- part café, part bookstore, part yarn shop -- and life is going well in Kindred, their little town somewhere in the Midwest.

That is, until someone serves up murder in Eggs in Purgatory (304 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $6.99), the first in Laura Childs' projected new series.

But Suzanne Dietz and her pals Toni and Petra take the lemons and quite literally make lemonade. Suzanne's the main character here, and her sleuthing uncovers a tangled mess that includes a religious cult and small-town corruption.

With a plot that holds the interest and characters who are well-envisioned and well-executed, Childs will have readers planning another trip to the Cackleberry Club and its treats.
Contact Jay Strafford at (804) 649-6698 or jstrafford@timesdispatch.com.