Miss Julia to the Rescue

Miss Julia #13

by Ann B. Ross

As we know from her many trips to the New York Times bestseller list, Miss Julia simply can't abide sitting idle. And with young Lloyd moving out and husband Sam off to the Holy Land, everybody's favorite steel magnolia is feeling restless. Maybe it's time for that long-delayed home makeover. But before Miss Julia can even pick a color swatch, Hazel Marie's new husband, private eye J.D. Pickens, goes missing — and police in West Virginia have detained an injured man fitting his description. Meanwhile, a religious cult is out to convert the locals—and Miss Julia must pick up the pace to free J.D. and get back in time to stop them.

"Delightful . . . Those who like smiles with their crimes will be satisfied" by the latest in the popular Miss Julia series (Publishers Weekly)

*** Description from Amazon ***

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Humor, Womens Fiction, Cozy Mystery, Southern, Contemporary

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2012

About the author

Ann B. Ross, who taught literature at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, is the author of Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, one of the most popular Southern debut novels in years, Miss Julia Takes Over, Miss Julia Throws a Wedding, and Miss Julia Hits the Road. She lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this series and since it has ended, I am really savoring the rest of the books. Miss Julia really puts herself out there and gets into such pickles because of it. These books just make me smile and they make my world happier.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Proper Southern matron meets modern religious practices in Ann Ross’ thirteenth entry in the Miss Julia series based in Abbotsville, North Carolina. This is one series that has changed and grown over the years. A quick synopsis for those who haven’t followed the series: Miss Julia started off the series as a recent widow who discovered that her now-deceased husband had a child (Lloyd) by a mistress (Hazel Marie). We have followed Miss Julia as she accepted Hazel Marie and Lloyd and took the two into her heart and home. Miss Julia also fell in love with her old lawyer friend Sam and after a few false starts married him. Other main characters are Lillian, the African-American housekeeper/cook for Miss Julia, Lillian’s granddaughter Latisha, and J.D. Pickens, the private-eye that Hazel Marie fell for and married. Our last book had Hazel Marie having twin daughters.

The current book finds Hazel Marie and J.D., with twins, living in Sam’s old home just four blocks away. Sam had moved in with Miss Julia after they married so his home was available. Miss Julia is struggling to adjust to Hazel Marie’s absence (but not the twins) and she is also faced with the sad fact that Lloyd will also be leaving to live with his mother once school lets out. Add to that Sam is planning to go to the Holy Land with a two week tour group. Miss Julia is at a loss … but not for long.

There are three story arcs in this book and all deal with religion. The first story is it is time to redecorate the house! Miss Julia hires an architect, Tucker Caldwell, to change the upstairs back sun room into Sam’s new study, Hazel Marie’s old PINK room into a more sedate bedroom for their use, and the downstairs master bedroom into an English styled library (including adding a fireplace). She also hires a very religious carpenter named Adam Waite who states he and his five brothers are “all sons of The Carpenter.”

The second story arc deals with a former area resident, Agnes Whitman, who has moved into a nearby community. Wealth is no object to her (just as it seems with Miss Julia) so she has built a huge home and is continuously remodeling and building outbuildings. And so there is competition for both Caldwell and Waite’s time. But more important is that there is a rumor that she is into one of “those” religions that deals with piercings and tattoos. And Agnes is setting her sights on more converts to her religion.

But the third story arc deals with a slight mystery. Miss Julia receives a phone call from J.D. but it is such a bad connection she barely hears a word. Except for leaving her feeling that J.D. is in trouble somewhere out there she doesn’t know much more. This causes Miss Julia to frantically search for him with the help of Officer Coleman and friend Etta Mae Wiggins. That search leads both Miss Julia and Etta Mae to a small mountain West Virginia hospital where she must scheme to save J.D. from the clutches of a devious but religious Sheriff and save herself from a snake handling religious group.

There is less of Miss Julia remunerating to the umpteenth about all the possible problems that may happen as has been in the last few books. And while there isn’t much mystery to any of the stories it is enough to make it interesting. But plan on leaving belief behind — if anyone has ever tried to redecorate several rooms of a house will know nothing is ever done in two weeks like it is in this book. A good summer read for those who are into gentle humor, tea-cozy type mysteries, domestic type fiction, and the Miss Julia series. Also fans of Fannie Flagg, Jan Karon and Susan Wittig Albert type of southern reading and mysteries.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book #13 in the series - another hilarious installment in the trials and tribulations of Miss Julia! Again, I was laughing out loud with every situation. Love these easy to read books about a church-going, Southern, elderly women that is just so "full of herself" - maybe I see too much of myself in her and relate!

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miss Julia cracks me up!

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

From a possible cult on the outskirts of Abbotsville to Miss Julia's stint as one of the buddies in a buddy road trip, Miss Julia to the Rescue was a fun read in what has been become a very long series. With JD missing and Hazel Marie unable to go after him because of the twins, who but Miss Julia (riding shotgun for Etta Mae) would be the one to head to his rescue? It's been amazing to follow Miss Julia's growth, in particular her love for her deceased husband's son, Lloyd. The same woman who was so worried about appearances and how to manage her household on her own has created a wonderful family unit.

[Heidi · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I was thinking about this book and decided it had no real ending. No one confronted Agnes for any part in Adam being forcibly pierced. Seems to me that would be a felony. The sheriff from West Virginia went from keeping Mr. Pickens drugged and falsely imprisoned to being his new best friend. Much was made of Miss Julia tripping over the rolled up Oriental rug, but it never had any real bearing on the story. I know these books are fluff, but they used to be fun fluff, and not so much anymore.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Miss Julia books. I love that's she's feisty while remaining proper. I like that she bucks convention while maintaining her standing in the community. And I absolutely love that she took Hazel Marie and Little Lloyd under her wing and under her roof after her scuzzbucket husband died and they showed up on her doorstep. It is a convoluted family dynamic but I know several families pretty much like them! In this book she does everything in her power to rescue her friends and loved ones. Another great visit with the extended Springer-Murdock family!

[Deb · Rating 2 out of 5]

What has happened to Mrs Julia Murdoch Springer? She leaves the criminal religious cult to do their worse at the end of the book. It's not like her to leave malefactors unpunished - is this one of those books that morphs into two?

[Heidi Burkhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 'Miss Julia' series is entertaining, I suppose especially to people who have friends or family from the south. I can relate to so much of the humor! This could have easily been three books...but it was all packed into one.

___

Another re-read...so enjoyable on these stormy winter days.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rollicking and scatterbrained -- Lucille Ball meets Miss Marple, y'all!

[George Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick, easy read. Miss Julia is much less the bumbler she sometimes is - nice to see her more "normal."

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed the humor in the book immensley.

[Russell Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Miss Julia adventure, and I think I enjoyed this one much more than the last several I’ve read. For those not in the know, Miss Julia is the opinioted Southern belle (think Julia Sugarbaker of TV’s Designing Women) created by author Ann B. Ross. Ross has written a passel of Miss Julia books since she created the character. Miss Julia Springer Murdoch is a devout Presbyterian and a card-carrying society matron in a small town near Ashville, North Carolina, and she finds herself continually getting into trouble. I recently consumed the thirteenth novel in the series, Miss Julia to the Rescue, and here, Ross has her beloved character traveling to the mountains of West Virginia with her sometimes sidekick Etta Mae to rescue Mr. J. D. Pickens, the private eye who recently married Hazel Marie, the mother of Miss Julia’s late husband’s son, and whom Miss Julia took into her home when she realized that Lloyd Springer, her late husband, had done both of them wrong. Miss Julia, with steely determination, set about in the first novel to show her neighbors that she would not be ashamed of her husband’s philandering and thus she welcomed Hazel Marie and her son Lloyd into her arms and home. Since then, Miss Julia has engaged herself in a lot of Lucy-like adventures, with Etta Mae often playing her Ethel. Nothing really intense ever happens, but the goings-on are funny, engrossing, and endearing, thanks to Miss Julia’s take on the world. I loved Miss Julia to the Rescue, and the next book in the series is currently in my “to read” stack.

[Nd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun Miss Julia book and served well while spending a week's vacation in the N. Georgia mountains. At the beginning, Miss Julia declined a trip to the Holy Land with Sam and secretly funded a spot for the minister's wife to go along with the group. This left her to her own devices in their small N.C. town, with good intentions of remodeling and rearranging rooms in their house to include a working study for Sam now that Hazel Marie & Mr. Pickens are living in Sam's former house nearby. Needless to say, Miss Julia's good intentions became complicated and nearly went awry. She received a virtually indecipherable phone call from Mr. Pickens asking for Sam and then learned that Mr. Pickens was supposed to have returned from an out-of-state investigation days ago. In addition to tracking him down and enlisting Etta Mae to travel to a tiny backwoods West Virginia town to see if he was the John Doe in their hospital, there was another mystery brewing. A wealthy woman that no one remembered, but who seemed to remember everyone, moved back to Abbottsville. It seemed that she was promoting a strange religious cult that might involve self-mutilation; but perhaps worse than that, she was commanding Miss Julia's architect and contractor to work at her property when they should have been working to finish Miss Julia's renovations. Hilarity ensued as Miss Julia tackled these tangled goings on.

[Jade Haynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this book starts with Miss Julia receiving an out of the blue phone call from Mr Pickens who appears to be in trouble. Miss Julia then embarks on this crazy escapade to rescue Mr Pickens in West Virginia and brings Etta Mae with her. They run into snake handlers, impersonate a nurse, and drag a half naked Mr pickens who is being held under lockdown with no contact whatsoever and drugged up in a hospital after being deemed a possible witness in an ongoing crime. Meanwhile, a sheriff is determined to get his potential witness back. When the breakout at the hospital is successful, Miss Julia stays on alert and the fear of the sheriff coming back looms over her head. Also, Miss Julia is in a small feud with a lady named Agnes Whitman- a tattooed, body modified, new age religion woman. It appears that Miss Julia has commandeered her top carpenter Adam Waites for the remodeling on her house. Adam is reluctant to stand up to Agnes- for he is a by-the-bible religious man and is being tormented by this Agnes to join her band of followers in her new religious practice. Honestly, with what happened to Adam at the end by this cult-like group, charges should have been pressed for assault. So if you like golf carts being driven into pools, half dead body suspensions as a form of religious worship, and straight shenanigan and high jinks- this is the book for you. I gave it 4 stars because Ive read some of the other books and I know it can be crazier😂

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is plenty of fun chaos in this Miss Julia installment, but I don’t think it was successfully brought together into a cohesive story. I think fans of this series will find it entertaining enough, but it’s not as well developed as other books.

At the beginning of the book, Miss Julia and Etta Mae drive to West Virginia to rescue JD Pickens who is being held at a hospital (seemingly against his will) under sedation. This was definitely entertaining and could have been a great start to a larger story, but the entire storyline fizzled out quickly as soon as they were back home. It never really went anywhere worth the crazy adventure of the rescue.

Instead, the book completely shifts gears to Julia’s issues with the carpenters who are remodeling her home while Sam is on a trip to the holy lands with the church. There is a strange cult that has taken up residence near Abbotsville that is attempting to lure one of the carpenters that Julia has hired. Eventually she and Etta have to perform another crazy rescue to save the poor kid from the cult. None of this has anything at all to do with the JD Pickens rescue or anything that Pickens was working on. It was like two separate stories in one book that had nothing to do with each other. Yes, there were fun moments in the book. It just wound up feeling like two half stories instead of one complete story.

[FangirlNation · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Miss Julia to the Rescue by Ann B. Ross, Miss Julia is alarmed to receive a strange phone call with a lot of static and asking for her husband, Sam. But Sam is on a tour of the Holy Land with Pastor Ledbetter, so Miss Julia turns to her former boarder, Sgt. Coleman. The police officer finally discovers that J.D. Pickens, the husband of Hazel Marie and father of her twins, has been picked up by a police department in West Virginia after getting shot. But unable to get further information about Mr. Pickens, Miss Julia calls Etta Mae Wiggins, a nurse’s aid, and takes off for West Virginia from North Carolina. There the people in the hospital refuse to tell the pair about their John Doe, whom they are certain is Mr. Pickins. Then Sheriff McAfee won’t reveal anything about Mr. Pickins’s identity, saying the man had no identification papers on his body, so the sheriff can’t reveal anything about him. Even though he admits that his John Doe is not under arrest, he won’t let them see the man because he is in “protective custody.” So they can’t even confirm if the hospitalized man is indeed their friend.

Read the rest of this review and other fun, geeky articles at Fangirl Nation

[Allison Mclean]

Julia must come to the rescue of Mr Pickens and her construction guy. Sam is off to the Holy Land. Julia is on her own to remodel the house. She needs to convert Etta May's room to Sam's new office, make Hazel Marie's bedroom more masculine for Sam and convert the main floor bedroom into a library. She hires Adam, who has also been hired by Agnes Whitman. Mr Pickens has gone missing in West Virginia. He manages to call Miss Julia but the call is cut off before she can get the full story. Coleman figures out where the call came from. Miss Julia and Etta May decide to check out Mill Run and see if the John Doe in the hospital was JD. They managed to comically get Mr Pickens back home. Meanwhile Ms Whitman has returned after many years away, posing as a minister of a new relilgon which uses body piercing and tattoos as their markers. Naive Adam ends up being chased by one of Agnes followers. Once again Miss Julia receives a phone call, this time from Adam, which gets cut off. Now she must rescue him.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beyond excellent with good plot, believable characters, and laugh out loud funny scenes! Miss Julia, a Southern Lucille Ball, always provides the reader with an enjoyable story but this may be one of the best of a marvelous series. Miss Julia, with her side-kick Etta Mae, who is her direct opposite, makes an awesome pair when they go to rescue J.D.Pickins in W. Va. After a run-in with snake handlers and other extreme religions, Miss Julia saves the day, all while getting her house renovated to surprise her husband when he returns home.

There are subtle commentaries on religions, both tradition and extreme, but they are handled quietly, much as one would suspect of any good Christian woman of a certain age in the South. As Miss Julia says "You'd better have a firm foundation when you go out into the world. There is no telling what you'll run into." This is especially true if you join in Miss Julia's adventures.

[Julie Trapp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sam is off to the Holy Land, Hazel Marie has moved out to live with JD ad the babies and MJ is dreading the day (c0ming soon with school letting out) the Lloyd moves in with his mom, JD and the babies. It will be too lonesome even tho they are only 4 blocks away. Then a strange phone call from JD that is garbled and the mysteries begin. They find out JD is in a hospital in the back woods of WVA and not able to talk on the phone - sheriff's orders. While all that is being figured out, MJ is remodeling some rooms in her house. Since Hazel, JD and the babies are now living in Sam's old house, he needs an office in MJ's house. The people she hired are not exactly workaholics. Then, they decide to go find JD. Without giving away a lot, I must say this escapade was about as unrealistic as it gets. How ridiculous. This book was a quick read, thankfully.

[Kathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hope this series gets back on track, in later installments. Unluckily, #13 misses the mark.

The beauty of Miss Julia has always been her slow but steady arc from judgmental to understanding. In each installment she has been confronted by people unlike herself, and, in growing more accepting, she has revealed the awesome character hidden underneath her provincial prejudices.

This time, the different people she's confronted with are written as cartoonishly creepy, and Miss Julia concludes comfortably that they're low, lost extremists, and her way is the high way. There were still a lot of laughs along the way--especially when Miss Julia characterizes herself as not one to preach--but all in all it's a sad disappointment.

[Kristin Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Miss Julia Series is tied with The Southern Sisters Mysteries by Anne George and The Cat Who Series by Lilian Jackson Braun for my all time favorite series!! The characters are lovable and once you start reading the first one, you just can’t stop! You are on the edge of your seat dying to know what happens next until you get through every book! I searched for years for another great series like this and I couldn’t be happier to have found this one! A true treasure! There aren’t many great writers that can capture my attention like Ann B. Ross has in this series. Well worth the time! If you’re on audible, the narrator is amazing! They are just so fun and enjoyable!

[Allen Duhe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Romp With Our Favorite Senior Cotozen

Miss Julia and her usual troupe of willing - and sometimes unwilling - co-conspirators face snake worshipping churches, sadistic and masochistic cults and a small town sheriff in this delightful “episode.” When private eye J.D. Pickens needs help, it’s Miss Julia and the intrepid Etta Mae who wander the back roads of rural West Virginia to rescue him. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in this delightful tale of Miss Julia’s exploits.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was in my opinion one of the weakest of the Miss Julia series, It seemed like author Ann B. Ross had a couple of story ideas but not enough for a whole book. This jumps around between a rescue of J.D. Pickens from the clutches of a back water sheriff. There's another story about a woman minister who leads a congregation of tattooed followers.
There's a secondary story of remodeling hell and Sam is visiting the Holy Land so he's absent foe much of the book.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

My daughter Julia picked this off the shelf at the library for me because it had her name in the title and I'm glad she did; it was a perfect audiobook to listen to while commuting to and from work. It's light and entertaining, and Miss Julia is quite a character.

I wish the author had made some things about some of the characters motivations clearer but overall this was just fun.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another rollicking, far-fetched adventure with Miss Julia. I have learned to suspend my aggravation of her total lack of logic, reasoning and self-control, and go with the fact that her emotions will get the better of her and lead her off into an improbable, and possibly dangerous, adventure. It's always entertaining and funny, and keeps the characters moving forward.

[Charla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't wait to read the others! Unfortunately I have had to skip around a bit because I'm getting the audio books from the library and I don't think they have them all, plus sometimes the one I want next is checked out by someone else. I've loved all of them so far, even out of order.

[Carol Stanley-Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want Miss Julia to adopt me!!! She is one of the best characters I've ever 'met'!!

All she wants to do is make a cookbook for Hazel Marie. When all heck breaks loose around her, she must get involved!!

Let the games begin!!

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too quick to judge

This is a quick read, but filled with outlandish stereotypes and prejudices based on a over exaggerated imagination. I kept hoping that the main character would find some depth, but alas it didn't happen.

[DeAnna Whisenant-Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miss Julia, Mr. Pickens, and Etta Mae! I love when she and Etta Mae go on adventures to straighten things out! Add the hillarity of rescuing Mr. Pickens! This and when she and Lillian told Mr. Pickens about the twins was hillarious! 💕💕💕 Ordered the complete series Nd preordered her last book!