Sweet and Deadly

I loved this book and felt sad that Harris is so successful with her other series that this book will remain a single. I love her writing and if you love her way with words, this won't disappoint. Well, let me say I'm not a Sookie fan and her Harper Connelly is getting a bit to perverted for me. So, if you want that kind of madness, this may bore you. But if you loves her Teagarden series and her Shakespeare series, you'll like this. The characters are solid and the story is complex enough to be interesting. I fear that Sookie and Harper will win out and those of us who just like some good writing without a lot of blood and sexual perversion will be left aside. Charlaine if you're reading, please get another promo head shot.

Sweet and Deadly was a wicked story reminiscent of the old South and its sometimes deadly charm. I loved the beginning of the story, it drew me into the fields of crops, dusty roads and the ever present heat.

I thought it was a great book considering it was one of her first books and is written in third person. This book is over 20 years old and newspapers do everything electronically now-a-days. The book was also originally only 154 pages long. Catherine is not in first person like her others, but you still get a sense of who Catherine is. I found it to be a real page turner. Then Charlaine Harris goes on to write all her other books in first person and WOW. Still

I love Charlaine Harris, so I immediately bought this book when it was reprinted. I was not disappointed at all. Harris is such an authentic southern writer; she describes the atmosphere and small town perfectly. The book is dark and Gothic for sure, and I was actually a little scared when reading it at night. This book is very unlike the Sookie books, so some fans may be disappointed. "Sweet & Deadly" is more along the lines of the Lily Bard series than any of Harris' other series. The book is dark, and the main character is jaded. The small, southern town makes for a wonderful backdrop, and, as in the Lily books, someone in this small town is hiding a big secret.

It has been six months since her parents died in a car crash and Catherine Linton has returned to Lowfield, Mississippi in the hopes that familiar surroundings will help her healing process along. She is angry because her parents were murdered when their car breaks were deliberately loosened and she wants vengeance for their deaths. She also knows in her heart that the culprit is someone from Lowfield responsible because her parents never locked their car or garage. One day while target shooting at the run down tenant house on her land, she sees the bloody body of a woman who is later identified as Leona Galles, who was her father's nurse more than three decades ago. The sheriff discovers evidence that she was a blackmailer but treats her homicide as a separate incident that isn't connected to the deaths of Catherine's parents. When a reporter dies while investigating the homicides, Catherine believes the same person killed all four people and in a dangerous moment sets out to prove it. Long before Charlene Harris wrote the Sookie Stackhouse tales, she wrote this mystery and it shows the talent that in future years will make her a superstar. Readers get a picture of living in a small town in the Deep South in the 1950s when everyone knows their neighbors and murder is an aberration. Even a quarter a century ago, Ms. Harris was a genius at creating characters who are easy to understand and of course the identity of the villain comes as quite a shock. This is a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining southern gothic mystery. Harriet Klausner