3.5 stars. The plot seems to be well enough outlined in other reviews, so I'll skip it.

Two things made me round down rather than up. 1) Every white person above a certain social status speaks standard English. Everyone else seems to speak some version of phoneticized "country hick," which I found very annoying. Note: Unless you're Mark Twain or one of a handful of other very talented writers, it's probably not a good idea to attempt dialect. 2) Considering that this was supposed to be a small town, people seemed to know virtually nothing about each other. A couple of examples: Our heroine goes into a skeevy bar and is pulled out by the detective with whom she has been consulting on her book, yet evidently none of the shady characters in the bar know who he is. They think she's his cheating wife, but don't seem to have a clue that he's part of law enforcement. Secondly,

Spoiler

the police seem completely surprised to find out that a known local child molester has been living with a local woman who has a small boy - and then the detective attempts, at least in conversation with Charlie, the main character - to put the blame on the mother

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