Monday, 4 January 2010

Grave Surprise - Charlaine Harris

Surprise it's a supernatural sci-fi thriller pulp fiction type book from Charlaine Harris.  Of course it is that's what she writes and why not she does it well and had a cult following from before the days of True Blood and blessed HBO.  I like Charlaine Harris in the manner I like Julia Quinn, it is not "classic" literature, but it rocks along and allows me to read a book in a day or two if it's dragging its feet.



Grave Surprise is no deviation from that - second in the Harper Connelly series, other titles include: Grave Sight, Ice Cold Grave and Grave Secret.  I liked the main characters Harper Connelly and Tolliver Lang, unrelated step-siblings who make the best use of Harper's unusual talent for finding dead bodies and identifying cause of death.  Without giving too much away Harper and Tolliver are called on to give a demonstration of Harper's unique talent at a Memphis cemetery to a university class that studies the paranormal.  In the process Harper discover's a body where it shouldn't be - the body of a child she had previously been involved in searching for with no results.  The book is then a pretty straightforward who put it there explanation.   There aren't a lot of surprises in this book - although to be honest I don't think it's a let down - it is just a bit formulaic - but given my liking for Regency romances and the odd murder/crime book I don't mind that.   Although every now and again a surprise at the end that I didn,t see coming is always good - and invariably makes that book a classic for me.

This book isn't a classic all time, forever kind of book.  It is what it is - pulp fiction, but I do love Charlaine Harris's style of writing.

Verdict: Quite readable - more than once.

S.

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