Book #7: Shakespeare's Counselor

The fifth novel in Charlaine Harris' Lily Bard Mysteries, Shakespeare's Counselor is also the last in the series. This was a somewhat difficult book to get through. Lily the heroine, joins a rape survivor's group. We've already learned about her attack previously in the series. Learning about the other members of her counseling group is equally hard. And then of course, one of the members of the group is murdered. So Lily and her new husband, private investigator Jack Leeds, are on the case- unofficially.

Lily is also training to be a private investigator. She spends some time undercover at a gym, and staking out a worker's comp claimant. About a third of the way through the story, we realize that Lily is pregnant, but that she doesn't realize it herself. In fact, she doesn't seem to have any clue at all, until she's in the midst of miscarrying. Afterwards, she's understandably weaker and more vulnerable than we've previously seen her.

I don't feel like the series ends on a completely satisfying note, but maybe that's because there's no big flourish. Lily and Jack will just go on living in their small town, private investigating, and apparently stumbling over bodies with disturbing frequency.

Book #6: Shakespeare's Trollop

Shakespeare's Trollop is the fourth book in Charlaine Harris' Lily Bard Mysteries. Her books are always a quick read, sometimes they're even over before I'm ready. Lily Bard survived a gang rape and now lifts weights and takes martial arts three times a week. She has turned herself into one ass-kicking house cleaner in the tiny town of Shakespeare Arkansas. Lily solves mysteries with the sometimes help of her private investigator boyfriend, Jack.

In this case, the murder victim was the Deedra, the local girl who's been around (she being the trollop in question). Being that Deedra was Lily's neighbor, and one of her customers, Lily feels invested in figuring out the killer's identity. She also happened to be the one that stumbled upon the body. That kind of thing seems to happen a lot in mysteries.

As a heroine, Lily is a little hard to embrace. For obvious reasons, she's not comfortable getting close to people, and she's discreet to the point of nearly being mute. However, she's very passionate about self defense, and she's a tidy soul. Okay, that might be an odd thing to care about, but it's actually one of my favorite things about all of Charlaine Harris' heroines. They all like to keep their homes spanking (or in Sookie's case, "spanky") clean. And being someone who also needs to have things in their proper place, I appreciate that aspect of their characters.