Book Review: Dirty Harriet by Miriam Auerbach

Honest review by Tara. Book obtained through netgalley.

This is proof you don't need a romance in a book to be wholly entertained and love every minute.


I was hooked from the get-go. The story opens with Dirty Harriet telling us about how she killed her husband at a wedding with a .44 and confesses she said, "Go ahead. Make my day."

I knew from that moment this was my kind of heroine.

What follows is a mystery involving illegal immigrants in tomato fields, mysterious female problems, car and motorcycle accidents, rick women, and more. To reveal too much would ruin the story. But I was not able to figure it all out until Harriet did--a plus for me. I like to have an inkling but I don't like to figure it all out by page 50.

The mystery was good, but what makes the book awesome is the heroine's wit, snark, and thoughts. And just her, herself. She's very down to earth, though she hasn't always been. She's dealing with her mother, who's on a cruise and babbling about a mysterious man. She rides a motorcycle and works on it herself in her free time. She cracks jokes about it being a 500-pound vibrator "always up for a ride, the pushrods pumped hard and the tires never deflated..." If you haven't figured it out, she was saying her bike was better than a man. LOL

She talks to an alligator and drink scotch at the end of the day.

There's even a moral in the end. Two, actually. 1. Never assume. 2. Nobody can be free until we're all free. Everyone is a prisoner to something.

I think my favorite, LOL moment was when Harriet has to get a pap smear...I laughed so hard, I was glad I wasn't in public. I'd have appeared like a lunatic.

"Please scoot up here a little bit," the doctor said. That was gynecological code for, "Shove your a** in my face." 

Hilarious. Fun. Empowering. No damsel in distress here at all. I highly recommend this and I'll be eagerly watching for book two, due out this summer.