From Publishers Weekly
In her second novel, Neely addresses the issue of color-based bigotry within the black community. As a child, Blanche White was taunted by her black classmates as "Tar Baby," and so she sets out less than enthusiastically for Amber Cove, a posh Maine resort filled with light-skinned blacks. The trip will get her out of Boston, however ("the most racist city in which she'd ever lived"), and give her a chance to see if her niece and nephew, who are spending the summer there, are picking up "hincty ideas" from what her friend Ardell calls "Caucasian-ettes." Despite an initially frosty reception at Amber Cove Inn, Blanche quickly makes friends with Mattie Harris, an "arrogant old girl"; catches the eye of Robert Stuart, a handsome pharmacist from the nearby town; and picks up the latest news--that Faith Brown, who routinely dug up and revealed dirt on others, was accidentally electrocuted while bathing. When a cove resident commits suicide, leaving behind a note implicating himself in Faith's death, Mattie decides that she and Blanche must get to the bottom of things. Blanche continues to appeal in her so-what-if-I've-got-an-attitude way, but while her first outing, Blanche on the Lam , was a mystery with a bit of message, this one is a message with a bit of mystery. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
Segregation is alive and well at Maine's exclusive Amber Cove seaside resort. But it's segregation between the Insiders--light- skinned African-American professionals like pioneering feminist Mattie Harris, her godson Hank (an MIT history professor), and the nervously proper Tatterson family--and the Outsiders, dark-skinned upstarts like Tina Jackson, the dreadlocked beauty involved with Durant Tatterson, and Blanche White, the caustic domestic who, relocated from North Carolina to Boston, thinks she is taking a vacation from detective work (Blanche on the Lam, 1992). No such luck: Not only was bullying Insider gossip Faith Brown electrocuted in her bathtub the night before Blanche arrived, but Hank has vanished into the Atlantic, leaving behind a note admitting that he killed her. So where's the mystery? In Faith's purse, where Blanche, goaded by an intruder who unwisely thought to discourage her, finds a cache of papers whose nasty secrets make it clear that Faith was a lot more vicious than she looked--and that certain Insiders are protecting much more than their social standing. Even so, tracking down the victims of Faith's treachery makes for a pretty limp mystery that, as in Blanche's debut, takes a back seat to an acerbic portrait of class infighting at its most corrosive. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

ANNOTATION

The heroine of the top-selling mystery Blanche on the Lam--black domestic worker extraordinaire, accidental sleuth Blanche White--is enlisted to use her considerable wiles to discover the link between a suicide and a murder, and uncovers a web of secrets that someone may be willing to kill for.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When Blanche White, black domestic worker extraordinaire, moved north to Boston, she thought it would be a better place to raise her kids, especially when she managed to get them both into a private school. But they appear to be getting as much attitude as education, as they start correcting Blanche's English and acting snotty about homeless people. When Blanche and the kids are invited to Amber Cove, an exclusive, all-black resort in Maine, she sees it as the perfect opportunity to observe her children with their wealthy friends and try to figure out how to stop them from becoming people she doesn't want to know. Along the way, Blanche gets an insider's view of the color and class divisions within the black community. Blanche stands out against the light-skinned, college-educated residents at Amber Cove, and some of the guests make sure she knows it - including her own daughter. But when one of the guests has a fatal accident and the godson of a famous septuagenarian feminist commits suicide, Blanche is enlisted to find out if these events are connected. What she discovers is a web of secrets that somebody may be willing to kill for, even as she meets a man determined to sweep her off her feet, no matter how much she weighs.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly