Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris

Grave Surprise is the second book in the Harper Connelly series from Charlaine Harris. Harper is a woman with a bad past, the most obvious event being the day she was struck by lightning, leaving her with a myriad of small damages and the ability to find the dead. Unlike in other urban fantasies Harper is one of, if not the, only person in the world to have a psychic power. She and her brother, Tolliver who acts as her manager, travel the states working cases where people, or their bodies, are missing.

In Grave Surprise Harper has been hired to do a demonstration for a college professor’s class on psychics. Sure that he’s called her there to debunk her instead Harper names the occupants and cause of deaths for a little graveyard with stunning accuracy, right down to finding a new grave, a grave on top of an older grave. The newest addition the the cemetery is an eleven year old girl that Harper herself was hired to find a year ago.

The find is stunning enough for the Memphis PD, but the fact that Harper already worked the girl’s case, and that the parents moved from the city where their daughter was abducted to Memphis, not far from the graveyard, makes the local cops suspect Harper and her brother and they suspect they’ve been set up.

Harris is a veteran mystery writer more popular for her Southern Vampire series, but with the Harper Connelly books she’s turned back to her mystery roots creating a world that’s a strange combination of real and dark. The cover of Grave Surprise (first US mass market edition) features a skulled jack-in-the-box popping out of an open grave. It matches the feel of the book perfectly, implying that this world inside should be bright and whimsical, but never quite makes it out the dark shadows. Likewise Harper and her brother are both trying to help people, and trying to shed the memories of an abusive past, and instead seem to be trapped by subtle chains, like depression and fears, into living dark lives.

This is the best book in the series so far, the plot is sneaky and more compelling than the first, but just as well written and unnerving. While Harris’ other books might appeal to a more romance-oriented crowd this series has the potential to draw in fans who never thought they’d like a book like this, proving that Harris and her work should not be dismissed as another in a line of trend writers.