I miss Anne George.  During the early 1990’s, when I was settling into life as an adult, Anne was one of the literary lights in Birmingham, Alabama.  She was a local girl who taught for years and wrote poetry and short stories on the side.  After retiring from education, her literary career swung into high gear and she made readers and booksellers happy until that day in 2001 when she died, most unexpectedly, during heart surgery.   Her passing broke a lot of hearts, including my friend J.’s, who appreciated her as a friend as well as an author.  Anne’s poetry was good but what I miss most are her Southern Sisters mysteries.  Anne turned Birmingham into the setting for her Southern cozies.

Cozies are that sub-set of mysteries that are uncomplicated fun.   Any violence is usually off-stage, the detective is normally an amateur and there’s a minimum of grit or grime.  Jessica Fletcher is a good example of a cozy’s detective, although the first must have been Miss Jane Marple.  Normally, I like mayhem in my mysteries and angst running through all of the characters (hurray for Val McDermid!) but I love Anne George’s Southern Sisters mysteries because she wrote about the world I live in.  And she wrote about it well.

For example, let’s take my favorite in the series, Murder Makes Waves.  The central characters, Mary Alice and Patricia Anne, are known to the world as Sister and Mouse.  (Six feet tall and 250 pounds means Mary Alice is a presence in any room.  At five foot one and 105 lbs., Patricia Anne can get overlooked).   These sisters are driving down to Destin with an adult daughter when they stop to see the sights along the way.   Every place in that road trip exists, from the Peach Butt water tower of Chilton County  and Priester’s Pecans to the House of Turkey and the Hank Williams museum.   Stopping at each of these does turn a four hour trip into eight, as Anne observes, but it’s part of a trip to the coast.   Not stopping would make a vacation feel incomplete.

Anne George wrote about the sweet foibles of life here, from the perennial battle to cover the Vulcan Statue’s behind (he stands there on top of Red Mountain wearing nothing but an apron and mooning the city of Homewood) to our addictions to college football and barbeque.  This is trivial compared to the rest of Birmingham’s history but it’s nice that someone noticed the small things, the fun and silly things that also add to our lives.  Anne enriched as well as documented our world with her poetry and cozy mysteries.  Birmingham owes her a debt of thanks.