The title of this book comes from an old blues song and appropriately so. Lizzie Stuart has been looking at her past to some degree since the first Lizzie Stuart/John Quinn book DEATH’S FAVORITE CHILD. YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED ON MONDAY will bring Lizzie to the end of one journey and the beginning of another. As the book opens Professor Stuart is given a lead into her mother’s past. Lizzie has never known her mother nor the reason she deserted her as an infant. As she wades through gangsters’ memories and the music world Ms. Bailey opens a richly drawn world for her reader. The history is outstanding, her characters resound with realism and her plot keeps you turning the page until the very last. Like great blues, YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED ON MONDAY builds to a crescendo of bittersweet sorrow that somehow manages to offer hope.
-- Ruth Jordan, Crimespree Magazine

"Bailey's characters are so well-rounded, so real, in fact, that I'd like nothing better than to sit down and have tea with Professor Lizzie Stuart or play chess with John Quinn."  —Lonnie Cruse, author, Murder in Metropolis

"Quite simply a wonderful book from a wonderfully talented writer. [What distinguishes Bailey] is her intense love for the writing craft."  —John Fisher, Evince Magazine

"Lizzie Stuart stands heads above many cozy characters as a competent professional woman, whose profession actually can help solve the case."  —Maria Lima, Crescent Blues Book Review

"Recommended for most mystery collections as well as African American fiction collections."  —Library Journal