Gregory Mcdonald: Skylar (USA 1997)

From the Publisher:
Everyone loves Skylar Whitfield, Greendown Coutny's winsome charmer. He has innate sexiness that makes women smile. But he doesn't make his cousin Jonathan smile. Jonathan's a Harvard preppy gracing the South for the first time and he has a hard time with Skylar's penchant for hot summer nights, long-legged women and southern masculinity. Skylar has an equal distaste for Jonathan's presumptions, snobbery and northern propriety.

When the county beauty queen, Mary Lou Simes, is found beaten to death with Skylar's pocket knife nearby, Skylar must put his sex-filled mind and incorrigible love of the good life on hold. To find the murderer, he'll have to outwit the dimwitted police - and drag Jonathan along with him.

Gregory Mcdonald heaps this rollicking series debut with enough enchantment and eros to make a naughty girl blush. Uproariously funny, "Skylar" is fresh, quirky, and so delicately crafted that it is at once painfully suspenseful and sweetly moving.

Gregory Mcdonald: Skylar. HarperCollins, ISBN: 038072524X (January, 1997), 275 p., $5.99.