Charlaine Harris is best known for her Sookie Stackhouse novels (aka Trueblood). The Harper Connelly series was a move away from the vampire movement, more towards the mystery novels that Harris previously wrote.

After being struck by lightning in her teens, Harper was left with a new talent - she can sense the dead. On finding a corpse or even standing where one is buried, she is able to 'read' it, knowing what they died of.

Harper's back-story is not nice. She, her sister, half-sisters and step-brothers grew up in a dilapidated trailer with her junkie mother and step-father. The life they lived was simply appalling. Harper's older sister goes missing at eighteen, never to be seen again. The step-father lands in prison and the family broken up. Harper remains close to her step-brother, Tolliver. That closeness has become something more with the pair being lovers. They are not blood relatives so this is not as icky as it first sounds.

Grave Secret has a multi-layered plot that delves into that dark family back-story. A client with too much money and time brings Harper to read her grandfather's grave. Little by little, the revelations that grew from that reading turn the story back on itself to reveal an unsuspected secret from Harper's and Tolliver's past.

Like any good mystery, there are some red herrings along the way, misdirecting the reader about who the real villain is.

One crucial piece of information to the reader is that of Harper's response on first meeting on the characters. This reaction is so fleeting that I pretty much missed it first up. The relevance of that reaction does not become apparent until much later in the novel. By then, even the more astute reader may well have forgotten that development. The effect is to make part of the resolution in the climax, feel a little too simple and straightforward. However part of the art of writing is of course not to overplay crucial clues to the reader and give things away for too early. I dare say Harris has deliberately erred on the side of caution here.

Where I think Charlaine Harris really excels is with her character portrayals. Grave Secret is no different with the reader getting right into the character of Harper Connelly. If you are anything like me, you will become upset and angry at the life she was forced to live as a child. For fiction to produce such a reaction means that the author has really done their job.

Unlike my experience with the Southern Vampires series, Grave Secret is sufficiently self-contained that a reader need not have read the preceding novels to be able to get into this one.

This is a gripping mystery-thriller with supernatural overtones and I believe the Harper Connelly series will widen the already large Charlaine Harris fan-base.

Ross C. Hamilton