Shakespeare's Trollop

Overview

Shakespeare, Arkansas, is home to endless back roads, historic buildings, colorful residents--and the occasional murder. It is also home to Lily Bard, the local karate expert/cleaning woman with a particular knack for finding skeletons in closets.

But when the local woman of ill repute is found murdered, being familiar with her dirty laundry could make Lily the next Shakespearean to die.

Editorial Reviews

"There's nothing more revealing about people than the mess they leave for someone else," says Lily Bard, who has the perfect job for an amateur sleuth--she's a cleaning lady in the small, close-knit town of Shakespeare, Ark. A detached and wary observer of others, Lily reluctantly finds herself investigating the murder of one of her employers, Deedra Dean, in her latest engaging outing (after 1998's Shakespeare's Christmas). It's Lily's misfortune to discover Deedra's violated body in her car on a deserted road, the apparent victim of a tryst gone sour. For Lily, who already knows more than she wants about the promiscuous young woman's habits, the details don't add up. Since many of her other clients are related to Deedra, Lily endures their catty, sometimes malicious gossip, but when she helps Deedra's mother clean out the dead woman's apartment, she quietly disposes of Deedra's collection of compromising photos and videos. The nature of the crime forces Lily to deal with her own scars, legacies of the brutal abduction and rape in Memphis that sent her scrambling for the tranquil environs of Shakespeare. A wise, self-counseled soul, as well as a skilled karate student and fitness buff, Lily is just foolhardy enough to charge into a burning house to save a frail, mean old man. Indeed, Lily has such an engaging voice, full of pain and redemption, that the collecting of clues and the unfolding of the crime take a back seat to her personal story. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author Information

Bio of Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris, who has been writing mysteries for over twenty years, is a native of Mississippi. Born and raised in the Delta, she began training for her career as soon as she could hold a pencil. Though her early works consisted largely of poems about ghosts and (later) teenage angst, she began writing plays when she attended Rhodes College in Memphis, and graduated to books a few years later. After publishing two stand-alone mysteries, Harris decided to establish a series. She began the lighthearted Aurora Teagarden books with Real Murders, which garnered an Agatha nomination. Harris's protagonist, a diminutive Georgia librarian whose life never turns out quite the way she planned, kept Harris busy for several books, but finally Harris (and Aurora) grew restless. The result of this restlessness was the much edgier Shakespeare series -- set not in England, but in rural Arkansas. The heroine of the Shakespeare books is Lily Bard, a tough and taciturn woman whose life has been permanently reshaped by a terrible crime and its consequences. In Shakespeare's Landlord, the first in the series, Lily is caught at a moment when the shell she's built around herself is just beginning to crack, and the books capture Lily's emotional re-entry into the world, while also being sound mysteries. Harris's latest venture is a series about a telepathic barmaid in southern Louisiana. The first book in the series, Dead Until Dark, won the Anthony for best paperback mystery of 2001. Each book about Sookie Stackhouse (and her dealings with vampires and werewolves and other creatures of the night) has gathered more readers to enjoy the books' unique blend of mystery, humor, romance, and the supernatural. The Sookie books are also being read in Japan, Spain, Greece, and Great Britain. In addition to her work as a writer, Harris is married and the mother to three children. A former weight lifter and karate student, she is an avid reader and cinemaphile. She is a member of the vestry of St. James Episcopal Church. Harris is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the American Crime Writers League. She is a member of the board of Sisters in Crime, and alternates with Joan Hess as president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance. (c) 2004 Charlaine Harris

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Additional Info

Imprint

St. Martin's Press

Filesize

922.48 KB

Number of Pages

194

eBook ISBN

9781429980043