|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Harper Connelly was hit by lightning and is now able to speak to the dead. She can find missing corpses and can sometimes discover what they died of or, in the case of murder, who did them in. Along with her stepbrother, Tolliver Lang, who is acting as her business partner, she travels around the country looking for missing bodies or trying to find their cause of death. Professor Clyde Nunnley has asked her to display her ability to his students in an alternative course. He doesn't believe in her and wants her to go to selected graves in Bingham's old cemetery where only he has the records, to say what the people buried there died of. When Harper sets her foot on one grave she's astonished to discover that there are two bodies buried there -- the original person and another, newer one. The recent burial turns out to be the corpse of a missing girl, 11-year-old Tabitha Morgenstern, who Harper had been looking for herself two years earlier, but could never find. It seems that the body had been brought to that graveyard just so that Harper could discover it. The police find this coincidence suspicious. No one, including Harper, thinks that the girl she had been searching for would just happen to show up in another place years later. Nunnley, the college professor, is furious that Harper has brought such bad publicity to his class and attacks her in Harper's hotel lobby. The next day his body is found in the same, as yet un-refilled grave, with a deadly blow to his head. An FBI agent who was on the original kidnapping case and the police focus on Harper and Tolliver as suspects. They see that something very wrong is going on trying to connect them to the case. They both understand that Harper must use her special gift to uncover who is trying to frame her for these deaths --and for what reason. This is the second in the Harper Connelly series and the first I've read. This book stands well on its own and fills the readers in on back-story with a deft hand. I found it a joy to read. The people in this book are written against any cliches you might think of with such a premise. Harper is a down-to-earth sort of girl who, along with other physical problems, just happens to have developed an amazing ability to speak to the dearly departed after she was struck by lightning while in her bathroom drying her hair getting ready for a date. Author Charlaine Harris has given Harper and her stepbrother Tolliver an engrossing background dealing with drug-taking, neglectful parents. Both characters are three-dimensional real people who have good senses of humor along with normal moodiness and annoyances. GRAVE SURPRISE has a fast-paced mystery, along with very likable leads. They also have delightfully quirky friends. The clues and solution to the crime is well crafted and solid. I'm definitely going to read all of this series. It's a winner.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, August 2006
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
