Fran Rizer Books in Order

Fran Rizer was born and raised in South Carolina, and the state stayed at the center of both her life and her fiction. Its coast, small towns, local characters, family ties, music, and dark corners all found their way into her work.

She studied at the University of South Carolina and began selling magazine articles while she was still an undergraduate. Her first major sale was a practical piece about planning a wedding shower on a budget. Later, she wrote articles on a wide range of subjects, including one about field-dressing deer, despite never having watched anyone do it. She learned early that research could take a writer a long way.

For twenty-five years, Rizer worked as a teacher while raising two sons. Thirteen of those years were spent in an elementary school program that included visually impaired students. That experience helped shape Jane, Callie Parrish's capable blind best friend, who is drawn from many people Rizer knew through teaching.

Then retirement opened the door to a different career.

Her first novel, A Tisket, A Tasket, A Fancy Stolen Casket, appeared in 2007 and introduced Calamine Lotion "Callie" Parrish, a mortuary cosmetician in the fictional South Carolina town of St. Mary. Callie's unusual job, sharp curiosity, big family, and habit of landing near suspicious deaths gave Rizer plenty to build on. The series continued with books such as Hey Diddle Diddle, the Corpse and the Fiddle, Casket Case, A Corpse Under the Christmas Tree, and A Skull Full of Posies.

Rizer called the Callie books "cozyesque." They bring together murder mysteries, small-town humor, funeral-home details, friendship, romance, family trouble, bluegrass, recipes, and Southern settings. She kept explicit sex and graphic violence off the page, but she did not avoid danger. Callie may be funny and down-to-earth, yet the cases can turn personal fast.

She didn't stay in one lane.

With Kudzu River, Rizer moved into darker thriller territory, following women caught in a serial killer's path. The Horror of Julie Bates took her into Southern paranormal horror, set in Columbia and centered on a woman facing a force that may not be human. She also collaborated with Richard D. Laudenslager on Southern Swamps and Ruins, a collection of ghost stories, and wrote bluegrass and country lyrics.

Rizer received the Porter Fleming Fiction Award and earned nominations connected to the mystery world, including the Agatha and SIBA awards. She lived in the Columbia area during her writing career, close to her sons and grandson. She died on December 24, 2019, leaving behind a body of work that ranges from playful funeral-home mysteries to much darker Southern suspense.