|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
POPPY DONE TO DEATH features Charlaine Harris' series amateur sleuth, Aurora "Roe" Teagarden. When Poppy, a shirttail relative, doesn't show up for her initiation into the exclusive Uppity Women club, Roe and a friend (also related to Poppy) go to read her the riot act. Poppy, it turns out, has an excellent reason for not making her appearance: someone's murdered her. The widowed Roe, a woman with a strong sense of responsibility, works as a public librarian, but her job takes a back seat as she sets about performing the necessary tasks facing the bereaved, and perhaps, slightly relieved family. Roe's love life and the problems posed by her own more immediate family members don't simplify matters any. The more she learns about Poppy, the further Roe finds herself embroiled in the mystery surrounding her death. The mystery itself works rather well. Harris writes a solid plot and her characters are three-dimensional. Atypically for the genre, the victim isn't merely a plot device. By the end of the book, the reader is left with a vivid, and in some respects, compassionate portrait of Poppy. Harris employs the first person in POPPY DONE TO DEATH, which can be a problematic literary device. It may not have been the best choice here. It makes it hard at times to follow the permutations of the bloodlines, divorces, affairs, and remarriages of the characters. Not having read any of the other books in this series, it's uncertain to me whether these relationships are made clearer in prior books, or if this is a deliberate choice on the part of Harris -- family is most definitely a theme in POPPY DONE TO DEATH. In any case, the use of the first person doesn't impede the likeability of Roe, who takes on the tedious, awkward, but essential chores that follow the death of a family member without hesitation and without expectation of gratitude. Fun, engrossing, and entertaining.
Reviewed by Michelle L. Zafron, January 2004
This book has more than one review. Click here to show all.
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
|
