Killer on a Hot Tin Roof

Washburn's breezy, briskly paced third Literary Tour cozy (after 2009's Huckleberry Finished) takes Atlanta tour organizer Delilah Dickinson to New Orleans' French Quarter. Delilah's hopes for an uneventful trip, one spent shepherding college professors to the annual Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, are soon frustrated by the careerist infighting and emotional tensions among her charges. The group is particularly incensed to discover that one of its members, the ambitious Dr. Michael Frasier, plans to question the authorship of the novel's namesake play. When Frasier's surprise guest, his candidate for the real author and a onetime lover of Williams, turns up murdered, Delilah once again puts on her sleuthing cap. Washburn's literary in-jokes and lightly satirical jabs at academe entertain, but the book's main attraction is its likably down-to-earth protagonist, though many readers will probably figure out whodunit before she does. (Dec.)