"Elizabeth has returned from England to Danville, Virginia, on two missions of mercy. She must rescue her brother Bill, a novice lawyer, from charge of fraud and a rather nasty jail term ...and try to reconcile her parents, who are unaccountably ending their marriage of more than twenty-five years. (When Elizabeth is away things do fall apart.)"A group of charming old ladies living in the Home for confederate Women had hired Bill to sell the antebellum mansion in which they'd lived for decades, insisting that he put everything in his own name and handle the unpleasant business as quietly as possible. But after the sale, the dear ladies are nowhere to be found, the money has been deposited into a numbered account in the Cayman Islands, and, as it turns out, the mansion had already been sold to the Virginia Society for Art and Antiquities as a museum."As her parents demand divorce and the authorities aim for Bill's head, Elizabeth rallies to save the family honor. And in her spare time she solves a puzzle from the past that has again reared its ugly head: the legendary mystery of the missing Confederate treasury -- two million dollars in gold -- whose last know location was in the vicinity of Danville."~~front flapThese blurb writers WILL try to make Elizabeth the star of the show, won't they?It's true: Elizabeth does save the day for Bill in the end, but she is in Scotland for the first 3/4s of the book, while Bill blunders his way into this mess and his new partner A.P. Hill specializes in being a court-appointed attorney for Danville's version of pond scum.I'll have to give the author full marks for witty dialogue: "...[his attorney] longed to point out that Mr. Huff's own airport was about the size of a potting shed ..." and characterization: "Mr. Huff did not, as far as his attorney could tell, spend his time evicting widows and orphans and tying village maidens to railroad tracks, but he looked as though he might. There was something of the nineteenth-century robber baron about Mr. Huff, and every time his attorney was obliged to visit him on legal business, he always found himself wishing that he had devoted his law practice to more mundane villains like car thieves. At least you knew where you stood with the small fry."The author also knows her history very well, and gives us the background on the missing Confederate treasury (http://hnn.us/articles/49088.html) by interspersing narratives of two Confederate soldiers who wind up in the right place at the right time, and by extrapolation, with some of the gold itself.But the plot is transparent -- it's no surprise to anyone but Bill when he finds himself holding the legal bag, & about to be arrested for fraud & murder.The charm for me in this series is Scotland, and why on earth did our heroine marry a Scot and move to Scotland if the rest of the series is going to be set in the South?
I liked the book and plot overall, but the one thing that really bothered be was how Elizabeth comes in as a first-person narrator half way through. The whole book up to that point is in the third person, as are all the previous MacPherson novels that I've read (4 out of 6). The I-voice coming out of nowhere is disconcerting at first, but I got used to it. I still never found it necessary, though. I guess McCrumb thought it would be easier to show Elizabeth's emotions in the first person. Her letters to Bill are in first person, but of course letters would be. The storyline was fun in that it keeps you guessing about what the little old ladies are up to, and how the Civil War bits fit in (aha, gold!). It's too bad we don't see anymore after he's finished searching the house - it would be amusing if he required legal services after being arrested digging up the yards at Danville's other old homes. As always, the mystery is solved due to a great deal of luck, which is highly unlikely, but amusing enough to make up for it.
What do You think about MacPherson's Lament (1993)?
No bad- but not great either. There were some great moments of fun and a chuckle or two, but they mysteries were easily guessed. Elizabeth McPhereson was missing from most of the novel as well. Her parents are divorcing and the most memorable part of the book is her father's complaint that everything was the same, right down to the same stuffed pepper every Monday night for tas long as he was married. I just walked away from that disgusted. What a selfish man, I thought, then realized I was more into the book than I thought! What is evident is that Sharyn McCrumb continues to be a great writer with a distinctive style that really strikes me as wonderful.
—Elizabeth Kennedy
