A Dead Man's Honor
By Frankie Y. Bailey
Silver Dagger Mysteries - December 17, 2001
ISBN: 1-57072-171-8 - Trade Paper
Mystery

Reviewed by Alvin C. Romer, MyShelf.Com
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Is it par for the course for a Criminal Justice professor to pen intriguing mystery novels with clarity and great plots? If one had no other references save for the last precedent to go on, then Ms Bailey's second book featuring Lizzie Stuart would affirm everyone's claim that the author has all the clues for success in this genre. A Dead Man's Honor has all the ingredients that great mysteries should have: intrigue, innuendo, deception, and irony. Fresh after solving a tough mystery in England, Lizzie is off to a small school, Piedmont State University to do research for a book about a 1921 lynching that her grandmother witnessed as a twelve-year child. Our protagonist, as she's proven in the past uses all of her guile and a headstrong persona to bring to the fore the best of investigative reporting and problem solving. This is done by her being able to uncover interesting and intriguing information that shed light, implicate, and involve prominent characters with motives and self inducing intent.

Most of the characterization within seem to coincide with the plodding slow movement of the first halve as the plot struggles to define itself. It gets better as characters are interwoven to define storyline identification. How do you find the necessary clues to implicate and prove guilt beyond a reasonable cause for someone responsible for a murder, a lynching, a jailhouse suicide by a pregnant woman left widowed, and the raping of a twelve year old? Read this tantalizing novel for a first hand account to see what lengths people are will to go to protect a dead man's honor.