Yet there is still some humor, and still some of the supernatural.

And this particular “episode,” with the torture and murder of a number of young boys, is almost reminiscent of Karin Slaughter’s work. Harper is prone to uncomfortable physical aftereffects ever since the lightning strike, including depression. ‘For you, baby, HBO,’ I said, and made him moan.”ĭiscussion: This series is so dark compared to Harris’s lighter and happier Sookie Stackhouse series. That was what you’d sign up for if you were getting it for a person you didn’t know well. Provided you put their penis in the correct hole and made enthusiastic noises, they went away happy. They weren’t there to run a critique group. “In my limited experience, men were always so glad to get sex, they were pleased with it no matter how inexperienced their partner was. Harper is determined to give Tolliver a special experience during their first times together: Life is not all unpleasant for Harper, as she and Tolliver finally act upon their feelings for one another. Harper’s job, to find a missing boy, soon turns into a nightmare as she finds not one but eight bodies near an abandoned shack bodies of boys that have been tortured and killed. When work brings me to that part of America, the whole time I’m there it’s like wings of a huge flock of birds are fluttering inside my brain, never coming to rest. “The eastern seaboard is crammed with dead people. This makes the job particularly challenging for Harper: In this book, the two travel to Doraville, North Carolina, near the coast. Consequently, she and her 27-year-old stepbrother, Tolliver Lang (acting as manager and assistant) hire themselves out by traveling around to help find missing persons, or as Harper says, to find “the silent witnesses” to what happened to them. Harper Connelly, aged 24, was struck by lightning when she was 15, and ever since then, has been able to sense the location of dead people by the “buzz” they emit and also determine the cause of death (but not who killed them). This is book three of the Harper Connelly mystery series.

An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris