Review: Grave Surprise

As a teenager Harper Connelly was struck by lightning. The experience left her with a weak leg, numerous fears, and an ability to find dead people and discern how they died. Accompanied by her stepbrother and manager Tolliver Lang, Harper makes a living at this.

Her second outing (after “Grave Sight”) opens in a 19th century graveyard in Memphis where, at the behest of a local professor hoping to expose her for a fraud, Harper is identifying the corpses and what killed them. The professor is suitably nonplussed, and then the whole thing erupts in pandemonium when Harper discovers two bodies in one grave.

“I’d been standing on two murder victims, one ancient (at least to me) and one modern.” Harper identifies the new body as Tabith Morgenstern, a missing 12 year old that she had tried and failed to find two years before in Nashville.

Harper and Tolliver immediately become suspects, as do Tabitha’s parents and older brother who had recently moved from Nashville to Memphis. Thinking she might get more from the grave sight, Harper enlists her brother to take her back there in the middle of the night, a spectacularly foolish step which becomes even more so when they find yet another, fresher, body.

Still, with the help of a clairvoyant, a ghost (a first for Harper) and her own strange talents, Harper and Tolliver manage to extricate themselves, find the murderer and survive to tell about it, and soothe the unhappy ghost.

Harper and Tolliver’s bond is complicated, based in their mutual support during a harrowing childhood with drug and alcohol addicted parents. Harper’s deadpan, sometimes tortured, narration along with the author’s madcap approach to action scenes and her assortment of quirky characters combine to offer frothy fun along with an underpinning of serious introspection. An intriguing series in which the supernatural fits quite naturally.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Lynn Harnett

Please Note: Books reviewed are usually provided by the publisher, author, or an agent. Reviewers usually get to keep the book.

Book Review: Grave Surprise

Please Note: Books reviewed are usually provided by the publisher, author, or an agent. Reviewers usually get to keep the book.