Read Recently -- March -- Mysteries
Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris
I didn't intend to read this one when I did. It was meant to go on the bottom of the TBR pile, and I probably would have gotten around to it by now, but I started reading it on the bus on the way home from buying it, and was half-way through by the time I got here, so it made more sense to keep going than to put it aside.
As a teenager, Harper Connelly was struck by lightning. It gave her the ability to hear the dead--that is, she can detect their presence within a limited range, and can usually tell who they were and what killed them. She and her almost incestuously-close stepbrother Tolliver (no, really) now make their living travelling around the country, finding those who are dead and lost.
This time they're in the town of Sarne, in the Ozarks. The locals want Harper to find a "missing" teenage girl--missing, presumed dead. Harper finds the girl, but it seems that she was murdered. And, of course, murder breeds more murder. Harper and Tolliver should be out of town the next day, but it isn't going to be that easy . . .
This was okay. On the Charlaine Harris Heroine scale, I'd put Harper as more interesting than Sookie Stackhouse, but less so than Lily Bard or Roe Teagarden. I'll keep checking this series out, but unless she starts schtupping her brother or something, I predict my interest waning quickly.
Mildly recommended.
Where Serpents Sleep: a Sebastian St. Cyr mystery by C. S. Harris
Continuing the adventures of Sebastian St. >Cyr. This time, lady Hero Jarvis, the reform-minded daughter of an extremely conservative politician, is doing research at a home for, shall we say, women of former ill-repute (Hero is trying to prove that prostitutes are driven by economic, rather than moral, failure), when a group of men break in and start killing people. The girl Hero is with claims they're after her. Hero alone escapes.
Her father wants the whole thing covered up, because he doesn't want people to know that his daughter was hanging around with :cough: women of ill-repute. And since her Dad is basically the Prince-Regent's left-hand man, no policeman in the city will touch this case with or without a ten-foot pole. So Hero turns to the only man in her circle who (a) has the balls to go against her father's will, and (b) cares enough about the lower class to take on such a mystery, and (c) makes a habit of solving murders: our protagonist, of course, Sebastian St. Cyr.
If I had a complaint about this series, it would be that St. Cyr is becoming more normal as it goes on. Compared to how he was in the first book, I mean.
Recommended.
I didn't intend to read this one when I did. It was meant to go on the bottom of the TBR pile, and I probably would have gotten around to it by now, but I started reading it on the bus on the way home from buying it, and was half-way through by the time I got here, so it made more sense to keep going than to put it aside.
As a teenager, Harper Connelly was struck by lightning. It gave her the ability to hear the dead--that is, she can detect their presence within a limited range, and can usually tell who they were and what killed them. She and her almost incestuously-close stepbrother Tolliver (no, really) now make their living travelling around the country, finding those who are dead and lost.
This time they're in the town of Sarne, in the Ozarks. The locals want Harper to find a "missing" teenage girl--missing, presumed dead. Harper finds the girl, but it seems that she was murdered. And, of course, murder breeds more murder. Harper and Tolliver should be out of town the next day, but it isn't going to be that easy . . .
This was okay. On the Charlaine Harris Heroine scale, I'd put Harper as more interesting than Sookie Stackhouse, but less so than Lily Bard or Roe Teagarden. I'll keep checking this series out, but unless she starts schtupping her brother or something, I predict my interest waning quickly.
Mildly recommended.
Where Serpents Sleep: a Sebastian St. Cyr mystery by C. S. Harris
Continuing the adventures of Sebastian St. >Cyr. This time, lady Hero Jarvis, the reform-minded daughter of an extremely conservative politician, is doing research at a home for, shall we say, women of former ill-repute (Hero is trying to prove that prostitutes are driven by economic, rather than moral, failure), when a group of men break in and start killing people. The girl Hero is with claims they're after her. Hero alone escapes.
Her father wants the whole thing covered up, because he doesn't want people to know that his daughter was hanging around with :cough: women of ill-repute. And since her Dad is basically the Prince-Regent's left-hand man, no policeman in the city will touch this case with or without a ten-foot pole. So Hero turns to the only man in her circle who (a) has the balls to go against her father's will, and (b) cares enough about the lower class to take on such a mystery, and (c) makes a habit of solving murders: our protagonist, of course, Sebastian St. Cyr.
If I had a complaint about this series, it would be that St. Cyr is becoming more normal as it goes on. Compared to how he was in the first book, I mean.
Recommended.