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Shakespeare Series – Book I
Charlaine Harris
Victor Gollancz (Orion
UK)
15 September 2011 /ISBN: 9780575105256
Mystery / 1996 / Arkansas
Amazon
US
|| UK
Reviewed
by Rachel A Hyde
Lily Bard is
a thirtysomething with a mysterious past. She has lived in the small
town of Shakespeare for the past four years without incident, working
as a cleaner. But when she finds the landlord of the apartment building
she cleans dead it is time to do something about it. How can she
explain to the police that she was walking the streets at night
and saw a strange figure wheeling her own cart with a body loaded
onto it?
This is the beginning of a series by popular paranormal romance
author Charlaine Harris. It is not paranormal in any way, and in
fact has all the trappings of a traditional cozy mystery. The small
town, the quirky residents, the mysterious and nosy female invesigator
and the body of a person nobody much liked. That however is where
it stops being like a cozy, as this book shows up small town malice,
people who are quirky in a more realistic way than in most cozies
and a woman with a dark past (that is not her fault) she is trying
to escape from, or at least live with. If you have read the description
on the back you are probably expecting a cozy too, and if so you
will find this rather bleak. But it does have its uplifting moments,
and the author certainly deals with her subject matter in a sensitive
and thought-provoking way. Gollancz is more associated with fantasy
and SF in all its many forms so this is something of a departure
for them. I’ve read detective stories with more original plots
and found the endless descriptions of martial arts classes rather
wearing but when the book had been closed for the last time I did
feel that I had gained an insight into the lives and minds of women
like Lily.
Shakespeare's
Counselor (review)
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