The Death of a Worldly Woman (1948) by A.B. Cunningham

A.B. Cunningham was an American teacher, professor of English and the author of over twenty detective novels featuring the backwoods Sherlock, Jess Roden, who's the sheriff of Deerlick, Kentucky – a county with a shockingly high bodycount. Cunningham's Sheriff Jess Roden series belong to the American school of regional mysteries with writers like Todd Downing and Eunice Mays Boyd. So each book in the series is basically a slice of locally flavored, small-town Americana and country noir.Cunningham's appeared to have enjoyed some popularity and success with his Sheriff Roden mysteries during the 1940s. Anthony Boucher was a fan ("Cunningham's studies in Americana are unique in the mystery field") who praised "the solid reality of Cunningham's backwoods setting" and "Roden's uniquely effective sleuthing." However, the series has been out-of-print since the end of the 1950s and has regrettably remained out-of-print through out the reprint renaissance of the past ten years. I liked…