Miss Me When I'm Gone by Emily Arsenault

[Smokey]

Miss Me When I'm Gone by Emily Arsenault (William Morris Paperback/HarperCollins, July 2012)

Jamie is thirty something, 6 ½ months pregnant, and on a mission to sort the papers and perhaps edit the book her former college roommate, Gertrude, was writing when she died from a fall on the library steps. Jamie is also feeling a little guilty that she did not respond to the last email Gertrude sent her. An email in which Gertrude casually asks Jamie if she knows when someone is lying.

It isn't long before Jamie is wondering if her friend had a very serious reason for wanting to determine when people aren't telling the truth. And serving as Gertrude's literary executor is more complicated than she anticipated. For it isn't long until Jamie is wondering if her friend fell on the steps or was pushed.

As both literary executor and as Gertrude's friend, Jamie searches for answers she believes lie not only in the disorganized materials her former roommate left behind but also Gertrude's first book, Tammyland. While Gertrude's Tammyland focuses on a tour of places associated with the women of country music -- Tammy Winette in particular -- and explores her feelings about being recently divorced, her second book seems less like what was proposed to be a tour of places associated with the men of country music than a quest to learn the identity of Gertrude's father and an investigation into her mother's murder.

Arsenault interposed passages from Tammyland with Jamie's interviews of people in Gertrude's notes and Jamie's growing concern that something and someone sinister lies behind Gertrude's untimely death. As I read, I grew to know both women well and grew more and more suspicious of the circumstances of Gertrude's "fall". With Gertrude and Jamie, I began to learn more about Gertrude's mother, Shelley, and the men with whom she was involved. I realized, before Jamie did, what must have happened to both Gertrude and Shelley, but I'm pretty confident Arsenault meant me to do so.

The book offers a suspense and tension that builds gradually, until the mysteries of Gertrude and Shelley are solved as much as they can be. And I learned quite a lot about the women of country and some of their music as a bonus.
I recommend this book as both a mystery novel and a glimpse into the minds of and emotions of two, strong women characters.