Sunday, March 22, 2026

Book Review: "The Best Little Motel in Texas" by Lyla Lane

This cozy mystery featuring the unlikeliest band of amateur detectives was such fun! I hope this is the start of a series.

Cordelia is completely shocked to receive a call from her old hometown of Sarsaparilla Falls, Texas. She and her mother fled the judgmental small town and rebuilt their lives in Dallas, and Cordelia hasn’t thought of the place—or of her childhood, getting her mother home from bars—in years.

It turns out her great-aunt Penelope (whom Cordelia didn’t know existed) passed away, and named her as the owner of the Chickadee Motel. Cordelia can’t imagine working at a motel, but apparently she can’t sell it unless the residents agree. So she reluctantly heads back to Sarsaparilla Falls to see what she’s been stuck with.

Much to her surprise, she finds out that the Chickadee isn’t a motel: it’s a brothel. The “residents” are Daisy, Belinda Sue, and Arline, three women who have been, umm, working with, the men in town for 40 or so years. (Mostly with their wives’ approval.) So Cordelia is the new madam.

The first thing she wants to do is get out of town and away from the motel. But when the town’s pastor dies in Daisy’s bed, and it appears he has been poisoned, Cordelia knows she needs to help her “chicks.” They begin their investigation in order to clear Daisy’s name, but they don’t realize what a tangled web they’ve stepped into.

I could only imagine what a film or television adaptation of this book would look like. Picturing the “chicks” in their outfits made me smile, and Cordelia was a fun character to watch develop. This really was a fun one!

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