Booty Bones

Haines’s delightful 14th Sarah Booth Delaney mystery (after 2013’s Smarty Bones) takes PI Sarah Booth and her fiancé, film actor Graf Milieu, to Dauphin Island, Ala., where she hopes that they can work on wedding plans while Graf recovers from a gunshot wound to his leg. On a tour of the small barrier island, a stranger, Angela Trotter, asks Sarah Booth to investigate her father’s brutal murder. Angela thinks the wrong man is serving a life sentence for the crime. Graf, preoccupied with his physical therapy, has become emotionally distant, so having a project is just the thing for Sarah Booth, an appealing Southern belle with a good head on her shoulders. Figuring out who really killed Angela’s father, reconnecting with Graf, and maybe recovering pirate treasure keeps Sarah Booth hopping in this highly satisfying beignet of a mystery. Agent: Marian Young, Young Agency. (May)