02586cam a2200217 4500 264276158 TxAuBib 20040910120000.0 040910s1990||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9780870743177 0870743171 (OCoLC)21902112 TxAuBib Fraser, Margot. The Laying Out of Gussie Hoot. Dallas, Tx : Southern Methodist University Press, 1990. 289 p. "Gussie Hoot was counting her money. Same as she did every morning of the world. It was a thing you could depend on, like noon. . . ." So begins this delightful novel that is part intriguing mystery, part comedy of manners. Within just a few pages the irascible Gussie Hoot lies dead, murdered even as she performed her beloved daily task. As the quest for her killer unreels, so too does a colorful panorama of life in a small Texas ranch town - a town peopled by as richly varied a cast of characters as you will ever come across. Discoverer of his mother's body, Hugh Merriwether Houghton ("Bubba") comes onstage early in the novel. He has always been a disappointment to Gussie, a soft pudgy son when she yearned for a hard and reckless young cowboy; yet she has left him richer than he had ever imagined becoming. Then there is Lincoln Winters, the distinguished banker, respected by all but eternally bested by Gussie with her unconventional demands for storage, not investment, of her cash. And, in charge of investigating the murder case, there are Sheriff J. D. Killion and his hopeless deputy Rowdy, whose fractured-Spanish interrogation of a group of elderly Mexican pensioners ranks as one of the great comic scenes in recent history. Functioning as a sort of Greek chorus are the delicate Lady Lynn Reeves, Charlotte Buchanan Johnnie Mae Spence, and the others who make up Gussie's bridge club, the Lone Star Bidders - known to the disrespectful as the Lone Star Biddies. Then, too, at the very heart of the novel and among the most memorable of its characters are the two outsiders, Jewell Ray Cantwell and his resourceful wife Sherrylee - restless teenagers whose life on the road has led them to drift into town and out again, leaving only troubles behind. Combining suspense with humor, violence with compassion, and wrongheadedness with good intentions, the tale unfolds, and its quirky, eccentric characters discover that justice is, at best, wry ironic, and utterly whimsical. 20040910. TXHAM