Grave Secret

Harper Connelly hasn't led a normal life since she was struck by lightning and left with the ability to sense the dead and determine their manner of death. In this fourth installment of the series, Harper's investigation into the death of Richard Joyce overlaps the tragedy in her own life, the disappearance of her sister and the destruction of her family eight years earlier. Alyssa Bresnahan provides an overly enunciated narration that is at odds with Harper's supernatural adventures. Even through the action scenes, including two shootings, she doesn't stray from her slightly monotone voice. While Bresnahan cleanly distinguishes between characters, especially Harper and her boyfriend and her stepbrother, her narration fails to deliver the ambiance of the story's Southern setting, which one expects from Harris's books. E.N. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

September 7, 2009
In bestseller Harris's solid fourth Harper Connelly mystery (after 2007's An Ice Cold Grave
), Harper, who can not only locate bodies but also deduce the cause of death, and her stepbrother, Tolliver Lang, are summoned to Texas by members of the wealthy Joyce family, who are looking for answers behind the death of their patriarch, Rich. But when an act of violence threatens the pair, Harper realizes that the circumstances behind Rich's death may have ties to her own troubled childhood in nearby Texarkana. Further complicating matters, Tolliver and his drug addict father, who's recently been paroled, have an uneasy reunion that stirs up long-buried memories about the unsolved disappearance eight years earlier of Harper's older sister, Cameron. Harper and Tolliver's relationship, which blossomed into romance in Ice Cold
, is the beating heart of the story and helps smooth over the somewhat rushed and questionably coincidental plot.