Charlaine Harris

This uninspired addition to the Aurora Teagarden series (The Julius House, etc.) opens memorably with Lawrenceton, Ga.'s premiere librarian adjusting her lawn chair and observing Angel Youngblood, her bodyguard and all-around helper, cut the grass. From a plane that has been circling overhead drops the recently dead body of Detective Sergeant Jack Burns, Aurora's local law-enforcement nemesis. Aurora, or Roe as her friends call her, sets out to find out who killed him and why her garden was targeted for the corpse. As she conducts her unorthodox search, she has the nagging thought that perhaps the death has something to do with Angel or her husband, Shelby, or perhaps with her own husband, Martin, and his mysterious and dangerous past. She is not reassured when the FBI is called in, nor when several other murders are committed. In between visiting crime scenes and attending company banquets (the one-dimensional Martin is a bigshot exec), Roe also deals with the post-honeymoon letdown of her two-year-old marriage and ponders the strangely intimate relationship she has developed with her bodyguards. True Teagarden enthusiasts may feel rewarded by this latest episode, but Harris is a bit too down to earth this time out--the suspense barely cranks up before the solution descends with a thud not unlike that of Jack Burns's corpse.

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