{"id":7153,"date":"2026-07-24T06:02:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T13:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=7153"},"modified":"2026-07-24T06:02:56","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T13:02:56","slug":"carolyn-marie-wilkins-let-the-murderer-say-amen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/carolyn-marie-wilkins-let-the-murderer-say-amen\/","title":{"rendered":"Carolyn Marie Wilkins: Let the Murderer Say Amen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Psychics & Soul Food #2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This lively and compelling mystery is set in a small town in Illinois in the 20\u2019s.\u00a0 While author Wilkins names her fictional town Agate, if you’d like to orient yourself it\u2019s fairly close to Joliet, outside of Chicago. The central character is the charming Nola Ann Jackson, who is working for a caterer and lives with her Aunt Sarah.\u00a0 Both women are psychics though Aunt Sarah has far more experience, and is known as a conjure woman.\u00a0 Both can see auras.\u00a0 I loved this aspect of their characters \u2013 it made them both more specific and more interesting.<\/p>\n

The two black women are living in the 20\u2019s, not long enough after the Civil War that relatives don\u2019t remember \u201cslave times.\u201d\u00a0 However, the black culture in the town of Agate seems strong and vital.\u00a0 As the book opens, Nola is working an event at a new church in town run by a Bishop Ra.\u00a0 Nola\u2019s antennae are up \u2013 she thinks there\u2019s something phoney about him though she does think he some psychic ability.\u00a0 The only white woman in the place is an opera singer.\u00a0 The other white person is the man who provided funding for the church building.<\/p>\n

As the women are packing up to leave, they meet the Bishop\u2019s wife, who comes to thank them and to winkle a recipe out of Nola\u2019s boss, Minty, who only gives it reluctantly.\u00a0 They go home exhausted, to awaken to the news that the opera singer has been murdered, and that a friend of theirs, Sam, has been arrested.\u00a0 The police are planning to move him to prison in Joliet as the last time a black man was accused of killing a white person, the KKK broke into the jail and lynched him.<\/p>\n

His lawyer is an old drunk named Freddie, and Nola and her friends are not only sure that Sam is innocent, they are sure Freddie can\u2019t handle the case.\u00a0 Before Sam leaves for Joliet Aunt Sarah makes him a \u201cmojo bag\u201d to wear and keep him safe while he\u2019s in jail.\u00a0 Sam is still waiting for the Bishop to get him out, but it turns out the Bishop\u2019s testimony put him there.<\/p>\n

While Sam is up in Joliet, there\u2019s another murder, and another friend is arrested, really putting Nola to work as she tries to clear her friends.\u00a0 What I loved about the book was the relationship between Nola and her Aunt, and the details of her awareness of people\u2019s auras as well as the work that Aunt Sarah does.\u00a0 There\u2019s a scene where the two expel a ghost from someone\u2019s home that is one of the best of the whole novel.<\/p>\n

The rest of the characters, especially the ones delineated at Bishop Ra\u2019s church, are well done and the story really moves.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to put the book down.\u00a0 The combination of the unusual setting – the Midwest in the 20\u2019s is not frequently covered in mystery novels – and the depiction of the town’s black culture make the book a real stand out.\u00a0 I was cheering for Nola to figure out her love life (reader, she does) as much as I wanted her to nail the killer.\u00a0 Which she also does.\u00a0 This was really a fun read despite some of the harsh details of life depicted \u2013 it\u2019s Nola who makes the book shine. — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Psychics & Soul Food #2 This lively and compelling mystery is set in a small town in Illinois in the 20\u2019s.\u00a0 While author Wilkins names her fictional town Agate, if you’d like to orient yourself it\u2019s fairly close to Joliet, outside of Chicago. The central character is the charming Nola Ann Jackson, who is working … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2563,1057,2562,10,162,2561,997,1276],"class_list":["post-7153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1920s-illinois","tag-amateur-sleuth","tag-carolyn-marie-wilkins","tag-historical","tag-kensington-books","tag-let-the-murderer-say-amen","tag-psychics","tag-robin-agnew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7155,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7153\/revisions\/7155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}