The King Is Dead

Things get weirder than a peanut butter and banana sandwich when crime reporter Samantha Adams visits Elvis’s birthplace in this Southern mystery. Crime reporter Samantha Adams is working on a book called American Weird when her boyfriend, Harry, invites her to a barbecue cookoff in Tupelo, Mississippi. It’s hard to turn down a drive to Elvis’s birthplace in a genuine pink Cadillac. And as Harry points out, the King’s birthplace “ought to be lousy with weird.” As they soon discover, lousy is right—and weird is just the beginning. Also visiting Tupelo is Mary Ann McClanahan. After killing her worthless husband, Carlin, she discovered he was already married to a woman in Tupelo who’ll collect his life insurance—unless she does something about it. Meanwhile, the cookoff heats up when a contestant is zapped by his own electric smoker, and Samantha’s dog has to be rescued by a Biker for Jesus at the Elvis Memorial McDonald’s. But when Lovie Rakestraw, one of Elvis’s junior high classmates, is found electrocuted in her whirlpool, Sam is on the killer’s trail like a hound dog.