After finishing up the whole Sookie Stackhouse series by Harris, I decided to give some of her other books a try. Since I loved the vampire-loving telepath so much, I figured I would start with a series that stars Harper Connolly. She, too, is a telepath, though she got her skills when she was struck by lighening when she was just a kid. Now, she has the ability to find dead bodies with her talent, and when she is close enough, she can experience the final seconds of the person's life.

This has led to an interesting career of traveling around the country to assist the police in missing persons cases. As you can imagine, most people aren't overly fond of her skills, but accept them because they need her help.

As she travels the country, Harper is joined by her stepbrother Tolliver Lang. He is sort of a combination of a security guard, chauffer, and agent. They have a particularly close bond that seems based on their shared experiences of being the children of alcoholics and an unspoken feeling of romance toward each other.

As the novel kicks off, they are arriving in Sarne, Arkansas, where they have been hired by wealthy socialite Sybil Teague. Teague's son was recently found dead in the woods, and his girlfriend Teenie is missing. The assumption is that he commited a murder-suicide, and Sybil can't live with that possibility. Thanks to Harper's skills, the police quickly learn that both were killed, but it leads to a whole deeper level of mystery that indicates that small-town drama can lead to dangers that run far beyond inner-city crime.

Once they have completed this initial task, Tolliver and Harper would be more than happy to leave town, but everyone seems to be happy to find ways to keep them around. As a result, they have no choice but to dig deeper into what has caused so much trouble in this quirky, Ozark town. The problem is that they have a great deal of trouble keeping track of who is friend and who is foe. Overall, it is important to figure it out quickly because as they dig deeper they learn that anyone who has a clue about what is going on ends up dead, and they just might know more than they should.

I really enjoyed the book, but it was a lot darker than her other books. I know that you are thinking about how that should be obvious since it is a murder mystery. The thing is that Harper and Tolliver had such a sad background and the same is true of so many of the people in Sarne that it is hard not to feel so much angst about their pasts. I am already looking forward to the next book in the series, though.