Grade: A-

Awwwwright, giggity-giggity! A Charlaine Harris book! I buy practically every CH book that comes out and this one I snapped up back in March, but it was only yesterday that I only got to read it. It wasn’t because of school or my ever-growing TBR (though that’s true too), but because I was bored silly by the cover. Sweet little countryside, some bees, a field of white flowers. Boring (maybe one of them ya-ya sisterhood women’s books that make me want to gouge my eyes out). Didn’t really think about it again until I came across it while looking for my highlighter (it was under my desk) and saw this. Yo, that’s a hand. AND THOSE AREN’T BEES! They’re flies! I was so unnerved by the sight of that tiny little hand so innocuously placed there (have y’all noticed this in all of CH’s covers? There’s always a tiny clue to an important plot point) that I found myself sticking in my book bag to read during class before dashing off to school. I started it during my Personal Narrative class (sorry, Professor Armantrout) and finished it during Victorian Poetry (sorry, Professor Loose). [Ed. note: Could be why you’re not doing so hot in school, asshole!] From cover to cover, I was absolutely riveted [Ed. note: You’re bucking for cover quote whoredom, aren’t you?] by the set-up, the super characterization of heroine, and the creepy Southern atmosphere. While I was never sure of the time period of the story— typewriters, African American characters referred to as “blacks”, white folks be nervous around black folk— I was nevertheless fascinated by the old-schoolness of it. Anyway, it was like Peyton Place except skankier… oh, and it’s kind of scary.

The Plot: Catherine Linton has been in a haze of pain and denial ever since her beloved parents died six months ago in a terrible car accident. She is unconvinced that it was an accident and believes her parents must have been murdered, but has no evidence to back up her theories. Now she has returned to her hometown of Lowfield, Mississippi, and what should she find on her first day back? Oh, just the bloody, broken, and beaten body of her father’s long-time nurse Leona. Catherine, who works on the society pages of the town’s weekly periodical, suspects that the murder of the woman has something to do with her parents’ death. The sheriff doesn’t believe her and is more inclined to think that Catherine did it. Upon further investigation, Catherine finds out that Leona had a little sideline of her own: blackmailing the townsfolk, which means pretty much everyone in town has motive for killing the woman. This, of course, includes Randall, her boss at the newspaper and the man she’s starting to fall in love with…

The Heroine: Catherine is a born and raised Southern belle, with a unique gentility and grace. She is soft-spoken, old-fashioned, and very reserved. It is almost like reading about a woman from a hundred years ago. Because she was shattered by her parents’ deaths, there is something about her that seems broken… like she’s not all there. She worries about manners and etiquette at the strangest times, like a murder scene, when another person would have ran screaming and crying. Her grace and politeness almost act like a shield, or maybe more like scaffolding, that serve to hold her up when she should be breaking down. It was almost very hard to get to know her as a character because she utilizes an armory of defense mechanisms to protect herself. She is fascinating and exasperating at the same time. I certainly wished she had let her guard down just a little, but I also had to admire her for her guts and resilience. She is the personification of grace under fire.

The Secondary Characters: This story, even though it is told primarily from Catherine’s point of view, is really an ensemble piece. Even the town itself felt like a character because it almost seemed alive with its deep, dark secrets and old-timey feel. It’s like it is stuck in some weird Americana time-warp of a time that never was. Living in this town is a cast of shadowy characters that seem to be hiding their own frickin’ skeletons. I mean, I really had a hard time figuring out who the killer was and it was only after I finished the book that I realized Ms. Harris had left a bunch of clues all over the place. There is Randall, the seemingly perfect guy that Catherine is in love with, whose father owned the newspaper and was being blackmailed by Leona. There is the town sheriff whose son is a major pothead AND a drug-dealer, also a victim of Leona. There are simply too many characters to list here, each contributing to give this book a creepy, whodunit feel that I was paranoid about everyone.

Oh my word: All and all, I really enjoyed this mystery piece by Charlaine Harris. It is short, sweet, and the prose is extremely clean. I really like how it starts out slow, with Harris dropping hints that all is not quite right in this little town, and the way it just hits you right in the middle because all of a sudden, Catherine is finding out all sorts of unsavory details about the people she thought were her friends, or at least close friends of her family. I was a little unsure about the time period in which this story occurs, but it did lend quite well to the stuck-in-the-past, we’re-all-friends-here feel of the piece. It’s a good mystery, isn’t overly taxing to the brain, and it’s over before you know it. If you need a book to take out when you go sunning by the pool, take this one.

Love, Peace, and Snarkage,

Please buy the book here.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: A, Suspense/Mystery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.