An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris

Paperback: 9780425224243, $7.99

An Ice Cold Grave is the third book in Harris’ Harper Connelly series, a dark mystery with feather-light touches of paranormal. For those who haven’t encountered it before Harper is a woman who gained the uncanny ability to sense the dead and read their last moment after being hit by lightning. After surviving a horrible, abusive childhood she and her step brother Tolliver travel around using her talent to survive.

In An Ice Cold Grave Harper and Tolliver have been called to Doraville, North Carolina where a woman, angry at the past sheriff’s handling of the disappearances of several teen boys, asks Harper to find the bodies of the boys that surely must be dead by now. Harper begins her hunt, and to her horror finds not only the six missing boys, but two others as well, all buried in what looks suspiciously like a serial killer’s dumping grounds.

Suddenly Harper finds herself not just blackmailed into staying nearby by the newly appointed sheriff, but a target of the serial killer’s outrage.

As usual Harris offers a tale that features a delicate thread of darkness. There is true horror in this book, but by the characters trying to block it out, move past it and not dwelling on it, even when it rises up and tries to claim them, it becomes secondary, and undertow rather than a flood of dark themes. The characters are Harris’ strength. They are complex, easy to sympathize with and as a reader you find yourself wanting things to work out for them.

This particular book is more scattered than the previous books, but it reflects the complexity of the serial killer nature. Despite the attention focused on Harris’ other series, this is her best. An Ice Cold Grave is satisfying, page turner that fans of dark fiction should definitely give a chance.