Out of Circulation

[Mary]

I grew up in a small town, a town not likely to ever have been written about, so for this category, I had to find a book that was set in somewhere like my hometown. Although Out of Circulation is set in the South (Athena, Mississippi) and the actual town is vastly different from mine, the attitudes and the sensibilities of the town are all too similar.

This small town, like mine, had a hierarchy of residents – from the venerable families who have lived in the town to generations, to the new upstarts who will never be accepted no matter how hard they try, to the familiar shopkeepers and cafes. Small town attitudes, biases, and closed-off attitudes brought back memories of growing up and how tough it sometimes was to fit in.

This is a cozy mystery, a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed and the crime and subsequent investigation take place in a small, socially intimate community. It’s a quick read, a nice break from the self-help genre I had been reading, and anything with books and a cat in the plotline is worth a few hours. Nothing earth-shattering, but a quick little read down memory lane.