offbalance80 's review for:

Real Murders by Charlaine Harris

3.0

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I am a HUGE Charlaine Harris fangirl. Enormous. If another reviewer sniffed that some of her work was "for serious fans only," I'd bark at them to hand over whatever they were talking about. Having devoured every single syllable she penned about Sookie Stackhouse, Harper Connelly and the residents of Midnight, Texas, I was feeling a bit of a Charlaine drought of late. My parents suggested I dip into this earlier series about residents of yet another small, southern town involved in some pretty dark stuff. (Although it is interesting to note that there is no supernatural elements here, but the book does not suffer for their absence - humans can be just as awful as any demon, and demons aren't always so bad.) My folks warned me that these books are not as well crafted as some of Harris' later works, and they are right - the book has some issues with pacing that Harris resolves in other books. But Roe is as winning a heroine as any of her others, and you definitely see the framework, wit, style and fearlessness that would become more sharply honed as she created her later works.