Aurora Teagarden is a librarian in an Atlanta suburb that may be near the city, but is still a small town. She also happens to be a member of the Real Murders club, which gets together to discuss famous murders. It seems like a harmless pastime until Roe one day arrives early at the monthly meeting, and finds one of the other members dead, in the same way that the murder they planned to discuss that night was carried out.
My previous experience with Harris’ work is the Sookie Stackhouse novels, so I’ll admit it was initially a bit weird to be reading a book of hers without a trace of paranormal influence, and it actually took me a little while to warm to the story. I don’t think that was necessarily the lack of fantasy elements, just a slow start in general that caused that.
I didn’t really get into the story until the body count started to mount, and I had no clue who the murderer was. Granted, I don’t read a lot of straight mysteries anymore, so my deductive skills might be a little rusty, but I must now own up to only figuring out the identity of the killer at the very last minute before the big reveal. The story might have started out slow, but I was definitely satisfied with the ending.