It will likely never win a Nobel Prize for great literature.
But when I picked up Fern Michael’s Southern Comfort I was
not looking for great literature—I was looking for diversion, entertainment,
escape!
And that’s what I found.
Detective Tick Kelly has gone AWOL and wound up in a bottle
after a tragedy involving his family. He sobers up, becomes a
best-selling author, and finds himself attracted to a beach visitor, Kate, who
just happens to be a special agent. Kate’s biological clock is ticking, her former boss is a
bungling idiot, and an abandoned child are all thrown into the mix to keep the
reader turning those pages. Does the
talking parrot hold the answers to the area’s human trafficking problem? Does Tick’s twin brother fall for Kate’s best
friend? Can you stay awake until the
last page?
I will admit that the dialog was sometimes, um, too
predictable. As was the plot. But predictable, is not always a bad
thing. Sometimes I need a story where all the strings are neatly tied and
everyone is smiling in the finale. Sometimes I just need exactly what the
title promises: comfort.
