Charlotte "Brownie" Wright is the town clerk in tiny map-dot Abbott, a
Southern town determined not to leap too quickly into the next century.
She is best described as a cross between Scarlett O'Hara and Flo
Castleberry from Mel's Diner and has big hair, a big heart, and a big
laugh. She stays on top of the action in Abbott with the help of the
local cast of characters, good fashion sense, and good pimento cheese
and pickle sandwiches. Investigating a murder is the last thing from her
mind until she finds the town historian dead in the old courthouse. With
the police force down one man, Brownie steps up with the organizational
skills only a clerk can possess. She and the police chief work their way
through a set of contradictory clues, a nineteenth century old civil war
ghost, and motives abound.