MADreads

Grave secret

February 9th, 2010 Liz C. - Alicia Ashman

I know that Charlaine Harris’s series featuring Sookie Stackhouse is garnering a lot of attention, helped along by the HBO series True Blood. And don’t get me wrong, I also enjoy that series. But the series I most enjoy by Harris is the one featuring Harper Connelly. So far there are four books in the series, with the latest being Grave Secret. Not such high camp, they offer a more serious look at the dark side of family secrets and relationships as well as a dramatic step into the paranormal.

Harper Connelly was struck by lightning at the age of fourteen. She survived but beyond the bodily scarring and the weakness in one leg, it has left her another legacy—the ability to, in a sense, communicate with the dead. Not wholly, but she can determine or sense the cause of their death. Harper and her half brother Tolliver are using this ability to build a business connecting the lost dead to their grieving families. Of course not all die a natural death, and typically murderers are not too happy having their secrets revealed. In Grave secret Harper and Tolliver head back to Texas. The head of a wealthy family wants to find out more about the death of her father but sets it up so that it is also a test of Harper’s ability and truthfulness. This sets off a deadly train of events when Harper reveals not one but two suspicious deaths. Mix in a back story of a seriously dysfunctional family and a missing, presumed dead sister, and you have an engrossing series that keeps getting better and better.

Entry Filed under: Mystery