You Should Have Died on Monday

The title of this book comes from an old blues song and appropriately so. Lizzie Stuart has been looking at her past to some degree since the first Lizzie Stuart/John Quinn book DEATH’S FAVORITE CHILD. YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED ON MONDAY will bring Lizzie to the end of one journey and the beginning of another. As the book opens Professor Stuart is given a lead into her mother’s past. Lizzie has never known her mother nor the reason she deserted her as an infant. As she wades through gangsters’ memories and the music world Ms. Bailey opens a richly drawn world for her reader. The history is outstanding, her characters resound with realism and her plot keeps you turning the page until the very last. Like great blues, YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED ON MONDAY builds to a crescendo of bittersweet sorrow that somehow manages to offer hope.
-- Ruth Jordan, Crimespree Magazine

Here's an excerpt (PDF file)