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Anne George’s Southern Sisters Mystery Series

Murder on a Girls' Night Out: A Southern Sisters Mystery (Southern Sisters Mysteries Book 1) Among the often recommended mystery series on the Cozy Mystery blog’s monthly recommendations, is the delightful “Southern Sister” series by Anne George. This series features the very amusing sisters – Patricia Anne (“Mouse”) and Mary Alice (“Sister”). The eight books in this series follow the adventures of some of our favorite sleuths, Mouse and Sister.

Mouse and Sister are quite different in appearance and personality. In the first book, we meet Mouse who is 60 years old and a retired school teacher. Sister is her elder by five years. Sister is the opposite of Mouse in most ways. Sister is quite large and Mouse is very skinny. Mouse has been married to one man for nearly 40 years while Sister has been widowed three times >>> and all of her husbands were rich, as in rich! Sister is the type of woman who dresses and acts flamboyantly. When she enters a room she gets attention. Mouse is a more quiet woman, but much of the humor in the books is due to Mouse’s sharp tongue and quick wit. Despite their differences, the sisters obviously love each other very much.

At the beginning of the first book in the series, Murder on a Girls’ Night Out, Sister has just bought a dance hall >>> the “Scoot & Boot” where she and her current boyfriend have been line dancing once a week. When Sister takes Mouse to see the place, they discover a body and the mystery begins.

The books are set in and around Birmingham, Alabama which is not exactly a small town, but the sisters and their families provide a Cozy atmosphere. Each has several children, with the travails of their unmarried daughters featuring prominently.

This series is a fun read. The only thing wrong with the series is that there are only eight books, released from 1996 through 2001. Unfortunately, Anne George passed away before she could give us more Mouse and Sister sleuthing adventures.

I can say without hesitation that Anne George is one of my favorite authors. If you are looking for a Cozy full of lots of fun and a great funny-but-warm relationship between the main characters, I highly recommend you try this series. I like this series so much that way back in 2007 I featured it in another post! And, this series is so popular that a few years ago we created an entry “Authors Similar to Anne George” which has a number of good recommendations. However, Anne George, was truly one of a kind.

P.S. If you’re interested in other entries about some highly recommended Cozy Mystery series, you can see them on the Most Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on my site.

Comments

  1. I can say without reservation that Anne George is my favorite cozy author, and not only mine, but my father’s as well. My father is notoriously hard to please when it comes to authors, and he usually is not interested in the cozy mysteries I love, but he picked up the first one of Anne’s books one day while on a visit, and was hooked. He hooted and chortled almost the whole time he was reading at my house, and asked if he could take home the other books I had (only 4 at that time). Then he bugged me and bugged me to make sure I bought her other books as they came out over the next years. I swear he grieved as much over her death as some relatives I could name!

    He’s since asked for other authors like her to try, but the only one he’s liked out of all the ones I’ve suggested Susan Albert Wittig’s Darling Dahlias series. He isn’t a huge mystery reader anyway, and I think what he enjoyed most about Anne George’s series was the interaction of the sisters with each other and their friends/family. It reminded him a lot of his own favorite aunts. Some of the authors on your “Like Anne George” list were too ‘dark’ for his taste, so I keep looking. 🙂

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    • Oh, I forgot to mention he also enjoyed Elizabeth Daniels Squire’s series featuring the absent-minded Peaches Dann, and so did I. Alas, this is another author who has left us.

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      • Stellans, Has your father tried Cathy Pickens, Donna Andrews, Nancy Atherton, or Carolyn Hart — especially the Death on Demand series? He might enjoy them.

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        • Those are good suggestions…but…He tried Death-on-Demand; he said he didn’t really want to read about a newly-married couple so much. Cathy Pickens’ Kindle books (due to failing eyesight, he can only read on Kindle now) are very badly formatted, and were frustrating for both of us. I tried to get him to try the Aunt Dimity books, but he didn’t like the first one, and that was it. 🙁

          I think he might like the Miss Julia series, so that’s next up to try. Also, I think maybe Patricia Sprinkle. But right now he’s working his way through a whole bunch of Westerns. 🙂

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          • He might like MC Beaton’s Hamish Mcbeth? They are quite different, but have a great sense of humor & are not too dark for the most part at all. They are quite character driven, also.

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            • @Robbie: Great minds, and all that! I just uploaded the first couple of Hamish books to his Kindle, and he’s going to start them today. I hope he likes them, because I have the rest of them waiting in the wings!

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  3. I agree that this series is delightfully funny and entertaining, and also one of my favorites as well. I enjoy reading the books very much. I don’t agree with all of the author’s views, but that is the case with every author I read, so I take them all with a “grain of salt.” However, as someone involved in animal welfare and rescue, every time she talked about how much her dog loved being outside in its dog-loo, I cringed. She was providing incorrect information. Dogs like being outside sometimes, but, ask any behaviorist, they prefer living inside with their “pack,” the people who care for them. But that is getting off on a tangent. These books are one of my biggest recommendations for an entertaining, hilarious read.

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    • Merilee B, I have to admit >>> those parts of the books bothered me as well. When we added our dog, Sprite, to our family, she simply became one of us. We thought of our family as going from four members to five. Sprite slept on my husband’s and my bed at night, lounged with my daughter on her bed while she was doing homework, followed our son outside when he went out to play, ETC. I always felt a little sad about Woofer having to stay outside all of the time. ?

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    • OK, good post.

      I agree with this wholeheartedly, as much as I love this series. Our dogs (and cats, when we had them) are our four-legged children and stay inside with us unless they want to be outside. I couldn’t bear to make them live apart from us.

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  5. I also loved this series and agreed with the idea of the dog always being outside wasn’t quite right, especially (if I am remembering this correctly) didn’t the sister have a heating pad on her counter for her cat? Bubba? Other than that ,it was a great series and am sorry there are only 8 books. The other series I think of like this, is the one with Angela and Caledonia in the senior center in San Diego. The Author Connie Holt Sawyer also only wrote 8 books. I read that there was a 9th one, but have never come across it. Two opposite characters, yet great together with a wonderful cast of characters.

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  6. I recently listened to all of these books on CD. It’s been long enough since I read them that I’d forgotten a lot of the less important details, but they are even funnier when you hear them. At least once, I had to pull off the road and stop because I was laughing so hard (I mostly listen to audiobooks in the car). I know someone who had Anne George for high school English, and I suspect that a lot of Ms. George is in the character of “Mouse”.

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    • Dragons3, that would have been a treat! Years ago, a friend of mine wrote to her and asked where she could find her book of poetry. Anne George not only responded, but sent her an autographed copy! Sounds like something Mouse would have done!

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  7. I didn’t discover this series until a year ago. I just loved it and never laughed so hard. So sad that she passed away and we don’t get to enjoy more books.

    As far as the dog living outside, that did bother me, too. Especially since I have 10 cats who live inside and, until two years ago, also had two inside dogs. I couldn’t imagine having a pet that lived outside.

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  8. Anne George was one of the first cozy mysteries I ever read. I wasn’t too excited when I found out the main characters were in their 60’s, but gave them a try anyway. I am certainly happy I did. I found the mysteries good and the sisters hilarious and feisty. A great series for anyone who loves cozies. I was very sad when Anne George passed away.

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  9. For me, the most memorable line from this series is when Patricia Ann’s daughter-in-law asks her for her cherry pie recipe because it is her husband’s favorite dessert from his childhood. Patricia Ann tells her sister she doesn’t want to give it to her (daughter-in-law) because all it is is a Wick’s pie crust and a can of Wilderness cherries!!! So-o-o funny (probably because we’ve all been there!).

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    • MJ, you are not kidding about most of us being there!
      My “delicious” holiday stuffing starts with Stove Top, which I doctor up. I also use frozen pearl onions in lieu of cleaning the “real things”. I remember my grandmother spending so much time making those dishes, but I guess my family doesn’t miss what they never had…

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  10. Anne George is also my favorite cozy author-favorite American cozy author, anyway! My favorite British cozy author is Hazel Holt- she wrote the Sheila Mallory mysteries. Sheila is the owner of a cat and dog, and part of what I love is her interaction with the animals. Like Stellans’ father, I also felt like a relative or close friend had died when I read about Anne George’s death on the book jacket of her last book, I think because I felt like the sisters were my friends too. It takes a special author to write characters like that!

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  11. Oh yet another old favorite series I’ll have to revisit! Just as soon as I finish rereading Donna Andrews… 😉

    (Actually did get Murder with Peacocks on my Kindle from public library this week — but have to first finish the current book I’m reading).

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  13. I absolutely LOVE this series. I have read it over and over. This series is like returning to a good friend, when you’re wanting some comfort and warmth. My only regret is that there aren’t more books in the series. HIGHLY recommend.

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  14. Oh I couldn’t agree more … The Anne George books are so much fun to read. Love all the characters and relationships esp. of course Sister and Mouse. I also enjoyed reading books that have older characters at the center of the story line, I can certainly identify with them.

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  15. I have read the Southern Sisters Mysteries since they came out – LOVE THEM!!!! And I live in Birmingham, so added plus to reading… In Mrs. George’s defense, a lot of people in the area have “yard dogs.” I don’t like it, but that’s how it is. Mrs. George’s treatment of Woofer in the series is not quite accurate, it is more kind than most people here treat yard dogs. Plus, she has Patricia Ann take him on walks, bring him in (at his choice), and treats Muffin perfectly! I am sure Mrs. George would be mortified to think people regarded her writing about Woofer as not kind to animals. She was a huge animal supporter!

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    • Becky, thank you so much for telling us about your area’s yard dogs. We have the same thing going on here in San Antonio. Lots of people leave their dogs outside all of the time >>> rain or shine. (And by shine I mean even when it is over 100*.) We never left Sprite outside, since she was “an actual member” of our family…

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  16. I would not want to “mortify” Ms. George with my comment about how much her character-dog Woofer was portrayed as loving his dogloo. My comment was a very short version of what I know, and a situation that can be, if taken to more extremes than in the Southern Sister books, a problem, and was only meant to (1) express my thought that I couldn’t help thinking, and (2) provide someone who may have been unknowingly influenced to think the situation was an ideal or even acceptable one with an alternative viewpoint, hoping to let them know that there are better ideas for dogs than the stories allude to. I also know that the main character took Woofer into her house on many occasions and took him on daily walks. I was glad for that. I could tell she was an animal lover. I was glad for that as well. However, it is not just in that area where people keep their dogs outside 24/7 [or close to that amount of time]. It is something I deal with frequently, trying to guide people in the right way to treat dogs where conditions warrant it. It was certainly not meant as a criticism of Ms. George’s moral character. Just my “job,” seriously, my job as a member of rescue organizations, to try to provide people with knowledge, for one thing, that, in certain cases, the way their parents, grandparents, peers, etc., have been treating dogs for “centuries” would be better served with information they previously were not aware of. One of the biggest problems we run into [in rescue organizations of which I am a member] is people taking our trying to help their dogs’ lives by providing the dogs’ guardians with information as a criticism of the human being-owner of the dog, when that is not the case at all, and it is counter-productive to say the least. I am not criticizing the human being, but I am trying to help the welfare of the dog or dogs, and provide human beings with information that they were not aware of or had not encountered before (or in some cases refuse to accept). Over and over, human beings refuse to accept facts, such as better ways to treat their dogs and enjoy their company, because, immediately, what they see criticism of themselves or their friends (in instances where we meet with people other than the pet’s guardians). That is not the case at all. We, and I, have found that no matter how diplomatic one tries to be in cases where we are asked to intervene that … and we understand why, ….that human beings immediately feel insulted. It is a hard obstacle to overcome, and the problem is, it is the animals who suffer, not the people. Once again, that was a long version. The short version is I didn’t mean any aspersions on Ms. George’s character (the author’s own character). Just pointing out something I actually deal with over and over and hoping to provide information in case it was able to help a dog somewhere, sometime. It was a viewpoint of one thing in the books that I could not help noticing. I love the books. They are enjoyable.

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  17. I’ve read all the Anne George Books at least twice some more. I was devastated when she died and wish someone would take up the theme, but “somehow that doesn’t seem riiiight.” I live in GA and am familiar with Al. I once found in a shop a five inch statue made of pot metal of Vulcan. Alas my son’s children destroyed it. So far have found only one made of plastic.

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  18. I have the set in PB. I’ve read them so often I will probably have to replace them.. They are like ‘comfort food’ to me. I’ve tried some of the books recommended. No one comes close to writing like Anne George!

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  19. I just started reading Anne George’s series after all your recommendations. Love it! The writing is terrific and the characterizations of Mouse and Sister are so real and full… can’t wait to dig in to the other books in the series. Thanks Danna for your website, it is a really great resource!

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  20. I just love Mary Alice and Patricia Anne. They can really get into some situations. I don’t care how many times I read these books, I laugh out loud.

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  21. I consider myself to be an avid cozy mystery book reader. I enjoy starting new series. However, I found this series in 2001 right before Mrs. George’s death. I was so sad to hear of her death. I visited Birmingham and visited the statue of Vulcan and toured the museum. I have all the books in the Southern Sisters series. I have them all in audiobook format as well. For the past 7 years or so I listen to the series again starting in February and finishing up before Christmas. What a wonderful gift she left behind. I seldom wonder how Fay and May are as they are now in their 20s. I imagine Debbie and Haley now solving mysteries. I too wish that this series continued. For me it does in my mind’s eye!

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