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Real Murders
by
Charlaine Harris
amateur sleuth, cozy mystery in a Kindle edition that was published by JABberwocky Literary Agency Inc. on August 1, 2016 and has 209 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Night's Edge, Death's Excellent Vacation, Must Love Hellhounds, Dead Reckoning, Bite, A Secret Rage, Home Improvement: Undead Edition, Deadlocked, An Apple for the Creature, Dead Ever After, The Sookie Stackhouse Companion, Games Creatures Play, After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse, Indigo, Night Shift, Sleep Like a Baby, The Pretenders, A Longer Fall, An Easy Death, The Russian Cage, Small Kingdoms and Other Stories, A Bone to Pick, Three Bedrooms, One Corpse, Dead Until Dark, The Julius House, Dead Over Heels, A Fool and His Honey, Shakespeare’s Landlord, Last Scene Alive, Shakespeare’s Champion, Poppy Done to Death, Shakespeare’s Christmas, Shakespeare’s Trollop, Shakespeare's Counselor
First in the Aurora Teagarden cozy, amateur sleuth mystery series and revolving around a shy librarian in Lawrenceton, Georgia.
My Take
This is a fun start, a group of mystery book lovers who focus on MURDER.
Roe made an interesting comment that explains her fascination with previous murders, and I suspect it’s my reasoning as well.
It’s fascinating all the murder cases Harris pulls in with each member of Real Murders interested in differing time periods and murderers. It sure gives me a new list of books to read.
There are so many twists and turns, in a “cozy” way, that seem to implicate everyone, as though the murderer is playing a video game. Oh yeah, and there are no cellphones or Internet in this story that was originally published in 1990. I mention it only because it feels contemporary with our time.
Arthur Smith provides some back history on himself and is prepared to fully disclose the issues of dating a detective.
As the amateur sleuth in this story that uses first person protagonist point-of-view from Roe’s perspective, Roe is offended by this killer (or killers) and her knowledge of murder and mysteries comes in darned handy.
There’s a wide range of characters from sweet to acerbic to downright scary with action a’plenty.
The prose is soft, smooth with a lot of introspection on Roe’s part. She’s so obsessed with her inadequacies — as she sees them. A single woman, Roe is obsessed with marriage. Her Southern culture appears to find any single woman a failure. She certainly has an inferiority complex about her hair and her height. It sounds like she’s a boring dresser as well. But, she sure does keep busy with the small town social life she has.
Lucky for Aurora, her dating scene also starts to heat up.
The Story
It’s Roe’s turn to present a lecture on a murder mystery, and her focus is on the Wallace case. Only she becomes concerned when she can’t find Mamie. And then she does. Mamie has been staged to resemble the crime scene in the Wallace case.
It soon becomes obvious that the members of Real Murders are the targets of a knowledgeable copycat.
The Characters
Aurora “Roe” Teagarden is a librarian and the resident manager of a row of four townhouses owned by her mother. Aida Teagarden is Roe’s Lauren-Bacall-like mother with a successful real estate empire, Select Realty. Her father, who cheated on her mother and hasn’t paid any child support, is now married to Betty Jo, and they have a six-year-old son, Phillip. Amina Day, Roe’s best friend forever and a legal secretary, has moved to Houston where she’s still dating up a storm. Her current date is Franklin.
Roe’s neighbors include Bankston Waites whose mother is a Presbyterian, Teentsy and Jed Crandall with at least eight grandchildren, and a new guy, Robin Crusoe. Edith Warnstein had lived in Bankston’s place before him.
Real Murders is . . .
. . . a book club of mystery lovers with each member responsible for presenting the Murder of the Month. Aurora is working up the Wallace case. Mamie Wright is the vice president who sets up for the meetings. She’s married to Gerald Wright, an insurance salesman. Jane Engle, the club secretary is a retired spinster school librarian, who now volunteers at the public library. Jane’s preference is for Victorian murders with a focus on Madeleine Smith. Detective Arthur Smith is in Burglary. He’ll be in on this murder because he knows the Real Murders members. Melanie Clark, a clerk at Gerald’s insurance office, is dating Roe’s neighbor Bankston Waites, a rather dull loan officer at Associated Second Bank. Sally Allison is a single mother who works as a reporter for the Sentinel. Perry Allison is her mentally unbalanced son who works at the library. It’s a bit of an ick that Perry is interested in modern serial killers like the Hillside Strangers and the Green River killer. John Queensland, a wealthy real-estate businessman, is the president of the club and fascinated by Lizzie Borden. He’s just started dating Roe’s mom. LeMaster Cane, the only black member, owns a dry cleaning business and is interested in racially motivated murders of the sixties and seventies, e.g., the Zebra murders and the Jones-Piagentini shooting. Gifford Doakes likes massacres such as St Valentine’s Day and the Holocaust. He sometimes brings Reynaldo, a friend. Benjamin Greer isn’t very bright and takes offense easily. A butcher, he’s also working as a campaign manager for Morrison Pettigrue, a Communist Party candidate.
The Lawrenceton PD
Sergeant Jack Burns is a hard-edged cop who doesn’t care what people think of him. He’s married to a school teacher and has two kids in college. Detective Lynn Liggett is in Homicide. Detective Paul Allison is the brother of Sally’s ex, and he doesn’t like Arthur.
The Library in Lawrenceton
Sam Clerrick is the library director. Coworkers include the obnoxious Lillian Schmidt.
Lizanne Buckley, the most beautiful woman in town is kind, lazy and conscientious, who works as a receptionist at the Power and Light Company. She isn’t a member but she has brought a visiting author, Robin Crusoe, who writes mysteries and was requested to teach a course. Mr Windham is Roe’s mail carrier. Thy Sting is a mystery bookstore in Lawrenceton. Lisa and Kimberly are a couple of Robin’s students. James Artis was supposed to teach three workshops and a class. Don is a waiter at a restaurant. Lizanne’s dad is Arnie Buckley who volunteers at the library and will focus on a subject he gets interested in and reads everything about it. Her stepmother, Elsa, also volunteers. Macon Turner owns the local newspaper.
Other copied or considered murders include the Wallace case, Jean-Paul Marat, Cordelia Botkin, and Neal Cream.
The Cover and Title
The cover is cheerful with its deep bright tone-on-tone yellow of three-stroke cubes rotated to create a subtle pattern. At the top is the author’s name in a deep orange with the title in the center on a slant in a white script with a black shadow and pale yellow scrollwork sandwiching the title. At the bottom is a “shelf” of library books in assorted colors outlined along the top and some of the slanted books in white. A pair of Roe’s eyeglasses are tilted on top of them with the series info in a soft brown to the right.
The title is too true for the Real Murders book club, for they are real murders.
