Below is the complete list of Mary Kay Andrews’s Truman Kicklighter books in order of publication. This is the recommended reading sequence for the series.
Truman Kicklighter Books
as Kathy Hogan Trocheck
About Truman Kicklighter
Mary Kay Andrews’s Truman Kicklighter books belong to the earlier mystery phase of her career, when she was still publishing under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck, before shifting into the Southern women’s fiction and beach-read territory most readers now associate with the Mary Kay Andrews name. The series is a very short one, made up of two novels, Lickety Split and Crash Course, and Andrews has described Truman as a retired newspaper reporter sleuth inspired in part by the retirees she knew growing up in St. Petersburg, Florida.
That background matters because Truman Kicklighter feels different from the heroines and communities that later defined so much of Andrews’s fiction. He is an older protagonist, a widower living on a fixed income in a retirement hotel, and the books use that point of view to create a mystery series with a distinct local flavor and a slightly offbeat charm. Andrews’s official material presents him as a former Associated Press reporter whose instincts for story, justice, and nosing into trouble have not gone away just because he is retired.
The Florida setting is central to the series’ identity. These books are rooted in St. Petersburg, and that location gives them a lived-in sense of place rather than a generic cozy-mystery backdrop. Truman’s world is one of retirees, bargains, local routines, and everyday urban Florida life, but Andrews uses that seemingly modest environment to stage murders, scams, and investigations that feel personal rather than grandiose. In Lickety Split, the action begins at the Fountain of Youth Residential Hotel, which immediately signals the series’ mixture of humor, local color, and crime. Crash Course keeps the same basic appeal while moving into a used-car-dealer murder case that again draws Truman into trouble because he cannot stand aside when someone around him is in danger.
What makes the series memorable is not complexity of structure but the personality at its center. Truman is not a glamorous detective or a tortured antihero. He is crusty, observant, civic-minded, and persistent in a way that suits a reporter turned amateur sleuth. Andrews clearly enjoys writing him as someone underestimated by the people around him, which gives the books some of their energy. The mysteries themselves matter, but much of the pleasure comes from seeing how Truman moves through his environment, noticing things other people dismiss and refusing to let small injustices stay small.
The shortness of the series also gives it a particular shape. This is not a long-running detective franchise with a huge supporting cast and many layers of mythology. It is a compact mystery line, which means the two books read less like installments in a sprawling saga and more like sharply focused visits to a distinctive sleuthing world. That compactness is part of why the series is easy to overlook in discussions of Andrews’s broader bibliography, but it also makes the books interesting. They show a writer still working in straight mystery mode, with a strong feel for character and place already visible.
Seen beneath an already completed list, the Truman Kicklighter books are best understood as a brief but revealing corner of Mary Kay Andrews’s writing life. They capture her before the reinvention of her author brand, writing mysteries with a strong sense of hometown atmosphere and an unusual central sleuth. Truman may not be as widely recognized as some later Andrews characters, but the series has its own appeal: a retired newspaperman, a sun-worn Florida setting, and a pair of mysteries that rely less on spectacle than on voice, place, and the stubborn curiosity of a man who never really stopped being a reporter.