Thursday, September 30, 2010
Real Murders
Real Murders
by Charlaine Harris
Having been a fan of two of Harris' other series (Sookie Stackhouse and Harper Connelly), and having had the Aurora Teagarden series highly recommended to me by other fans of "cozy" mysteries, I was looking forward to this first volume in Roe's adventures. In the end, I came away with mixed feelings. In Real Murders, small-town librarian Aurora Teagarden is a member of a "book club"-like group that examines "true crime" cases in detail and hypothesizes about potential solutions to unsolved murder cases. When members of that group start showing up dead -- murdered in ways that mimic real-life murder cases -- Aurora begins to investigate, with the help of two beaus...a sturdy but unremarkable burglary detective, and a bestselling mystery author who's just moved to town. I found the first two third's of the novel to be a letdown -- fairly simplistic characterizations and dialog. However, the final third of the book really kicked things into gear and I got a lot more involved in caring about Aurora and her life. For what had been a modern cozy for most of the book, there's a surprisingly violent twist near the end that may shock cozy readers. In the end, despite being initially disappointed, I ended up liking this one and look forward to reading more in the Aurora Teagarden series. [If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the rest of the Aurora Teagarden series or the Death on Demand series by Carolyn G. Hart.] -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library
[Also available in book-on-cd format.]
[ official Aurora Teagarden page on the official Charlaine Harris web site ]
Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide web site. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month.
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