Curing the Blues with a New Pair of Shoes is the latest entry in Dixie Cash’s series featuring “Domestic Equalizers” Debbie Sue Overstreet and Edwina Perkins-Martin. I never figured out whether this was supposed to be straight fiction or a cozy mystery, but whatever it is, I didn’t like it.
Debbie Sue and Edwina run their small-town investigative agency out of their hair salon in Salt Lick, Texas. It’s in their role of investigators – although I never saw any evidence that they do much investigating – that they’re called into service by the town sheriff.
The residents of Salt Lick are getting ready for a big celebration for Elvis’ birthday (seems he passed through town one time), when disaster strikes. Elvis’ blue suede shoes, on loan from a museum, are stolen. The town sheriff is a particularly dim bulb, so I guess turning the investigation over to Debbie Sue and Edwina seems like a bright idea. From my perspective, it's idiotic, as Debbie Sue and Edwina didn’t do much to find the shoes and what few directions they gave to the sheriff were misinterpreted.
Honestly, describing the plot of the book is difficult, as it meandered from one supposedly funny incident to another supposedly funny/quaint incident. I didn’t find most of them funny and/or quaint.
The dialect is folksy, with cutsie sayings such as “she’s drunker than a hillbilly at a rooster fight” and “you’re just grinnin’ like a flea in a doghouse,” that is way over the top. These sayings were intermingled with a lot of swearing – Debbie Sue drops the f-bomb repeatedly (although mostly in her thoughts).
I didn’t like either Debbie Sue or Edwina. There is more focus on Debbie Sue, who apparently has quite a back story. She used to be a barrel jumper in rodeos, and supposedly has an almost supernatural connection with horses. I didn’t like her enough to want to know more about her back story.
Every few chapters are interspersed with the story of two reporters from Dallas-Fort Worth and I found both of them more interesting than Debbie Sue and Edwina. However, when the female reporter acts as if she were 12 years old around the male reporter and then gets completely drunk, I lost most of my interest in them as well.
There are many references to previous cases. While I didn’t have problems reading this as a stand-alone, I have no desire to read any more of the series. Let me be perfectly honest. I never would have finished this book if not reading it for review. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have read more than two chapters. I didn’t like the main characters, and found nothing much of interest in the plot. If you have enjoyed the rest of the series, you might like this one. For me, I’ll be looking to other authors for fiction and mystery. Or whatever this one is.
-- LinnieGayl Kimmel
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