I agree that the dialogue is humorous, but there were some flaws that drove me crazy. First of all, I've never seen a bell pull that was narrow and flexible enough to strangle anyone. Then Abigail says she got a customer's phone number when she charged a purchase--later she says the woman always pays cash. The cover blurb says the aunt had a lace collection, when she actually had only one priceless piece. And of course we know where it was hidden, because that's rather obvious. And how did the murderer get it? Some of the writers that Myers admires, Aaron Elkins and Nevada Barr, do a better job with the details that make a good mystery. Mistakes like hers are very distracting.

As the owner of the Den of Antiquity, recently divorced Abigail Timberlake is used to dealing with rival dealers, cheap customers and weird people in general so she doesn't take her fellow dealers' threats on her aunt's life seriously - until her aunt shows up dead, strangled by a beautiful antique bell pull. Still, Abigail is convinced that it simply could not have been one of her fellow antique dealers and is content to let the police handle the investigation. Then she meets Investigator Greg Washburn and immediately offers any assistance possible. But when the handsome detective arrests one of her neighboring antique dealers, she starts doing some investigating of her own while dealing with a mysterious client she nicknames the "wooly worm", threats to her beloved son Charlie, her college age daughter living with a 57-year old ex-con, her ex-husband's second marriage, her Aunt Marilyn's obsession with pink flamingos and plaster poodles, her attraction to Greg, her mother's recently reactivated social - and sex - life, not to mention trying to get answers out of all of the eccentric antique dealers on her street, especially Southern eccentrics...

Larceny & Old Lace was an entertaining mystery. Abigail Timberlake is quite engaging and the reader will immediate connect with her. The supporting characters are a little less developed, which can be a problem because there are a lot of them. I usually don't have a hard time keeping characters straight in books, but I didn't feel like I knew enough about the characters to get a mental image in my mind so they didn't seem very real to me. The plot was a little convoluted because there were so many subplots involved, but I actually liked that because real life never just stops to let you deal with one or two problems, you always have a lot of problems going on at any given time. I also enjoyed the Southern setting and the way that the author gently poked fun of traditions in the South and Southern women. I look forward to reading more books in this entertaining series!

This first in Ms. Myers' "Den of Antiquity" series was the most fun I've had reading since I finished her last book of her other series. Abby Timberlake is the owner of an antique shop in the south. When her aunt is murdered, she sets about to find the killer. You don't want to read ahead, because that would mean missing out on Ms. Myers' sparkling wit and humor that peppers each page. The reading goes fast since it's a page-turner, and the time spent is truly a relaxing, enjoyable escape. I won't even complain about the price of paperbacks with a book like this. Worth every penny. I've read all of Ms. Myers' Penn-Dutch mysteries. I was happy to see that this series is quite unlike her other. Characters are different, more liberal and not as restrained because of their religion as in the Penn-Dutch books. The plot was thick enough, and the killer a real surprise. A pure pleasure.