Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Dead Over Heels by Charlaine Harris


Dead Over Heels
Aurora Teagarden Mysteries, Book 5
Charlaine Harris
Berkley Prime Crime
August 5, 2008
ISBN# 978-0-425-22303-1

From the Publisher’s Site:
Part-time librarian Aurora "Roe" Teagarden never liked Detective Sergeant Jack Burns, but she also never wanted to see him dead—especially not dropped from a plane right into her own backyard. But when other strange things happen around her, ranging from peculiar (her irascible cat turns up wearing a pink ribbon) to violent (her assistant at the library is attacked) to potentially deadly (her former lover is stabbed), she must decipher the personal message in the madness before it's too late.

My Thoughts:
Aurora Teagarden-Bartell, Roe to her friends, set up a lounge chair to relax while her bodyguard finished mowing the backyard. Alerted by the buzz of the plane, Roe looked up just in time to launch herself and Angel out of the path of a falling man. It’s an incident that begins a string of death and mishaps all around them, and a mystery that Roe intends to solve.

Arthur Smith, Roe’s ex-husband, appears to be observing her with hungry eyes every opportunity he gets. Her co-worker has turned threatening because she feels that Roe is not doing her share of the work. Angel has just been given some shocking news from her doctor and her husband, Shelby, is less than understanding. As things heat up, Roe manages to track down leads, rule out suspects and discover the identity of the killer just in time to stop them from taking another life.

This is the fifth Aurora Teagarden Mystery, and was easy enough to follow without having read the previous installments. However, there may have been information in prior books that would help in solving the mystery in Dead Over Heels. Ms. Harris is a creative author who develops interesting characters and a story that will entertain. While this is a fun mystery, because Roe does get herself into some rather compromising situations, there seems to be so much going on outside of the actual mystery that it’s easy to get lost along the way. It may just be that this is a reprint from an earlier time in the author’s career, and I’m accustomed to her advanced skills. If you’re a fan of the series, then do check it out, but if you haven’t read the prior stories in the Aurora Teagarden Mysteries then you may want to get a more detailed introduction of the characters by starting at the beginning.

Kimberly Swan, Darque Reviews

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I like this series alot and I am looking forward to this one being released.

Kimberly Swan said...

This was the first one I've read in this series, but I follow both her her paranormal series.

There's a lot going on in the story outside of the mystery, so if you've read the previous books and have more invested in the characters then I think you'll enjoy that more than I did. :)