An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris Series: Harper Connelly #3
Published by Berkley on September 25, 2027
Genres: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 292
Format: eBook
Source: Library
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"Hired to find a boy gene missing in Doraville, North Carolina, Harper Connelly and her brother Tolliver head there-only to discover that the boy was only one of several who had disappeared over the previous five years. All of them teenagers. All unlikely runaways. All calling for Harper. Harper soon finds them-eight victims, buried in the half-frozen ground, all come to an unspeakable end. Afterwards, what she most wants to do is collect her fee and get out of town ahead of the media storm that's soon to descend. But when she's attacked and prevented from leaving, she reluctantly becomes a part of the investigation as she learns more than she cares to about the dark mysteries and long-hidden secrets of Doraville-knowledge that makes her the next person likely to rest in an ice-cold grave."
Winter is still lingering on in a small Carolina community when Harper and Tolliver arrive for their latest job. This time law enforcement is calling them in because several teenage boys have gone missing over the last few years from their rural town. Charlaine Harris isn’t afraid to take things into the darker landscapes of a human mind for this grittiest case yet. Harper and Tolliver are pushed to the breaking point and finding the boys is only the beginning.
An Ice Cold Grave is the third of the Harper Connelly series that read in order with their blend of urban fantasy and murder mystery genres.
Leading into An Ice Cold Grave, Harper is hiding her recently arisen feelings for Tolliver. At some point he went from step-brother and dearest friend to something more, but she’ll ruin what she has if he ever learns the truth of her feelings. It is with this conflicted frame of mind that she begins work for the ambivalent sheriff and hopeful grandmother of one of the missing boys.
The sheriff was only a deputy when the first from their community vanished and was helpless in the face of the retired sheriff’s lackadaisical approach to the cases, but now she’s out to find the boys or the bodies and track down the perpetrator behind it all. If she has to rely on a woman with an unnerving gift, so be it. Harper has experienced this attitude too often to be put off and even when tired and injured from an attack, she presses on knowing this is a terrible fiend behind it all who won’t give up the need to torture, abuse, and rape the boys so Harper is most definitely in the way.
The other books in the series have been good and kept me deeply engaged, but An Ice Cold Grave was compelling. So dark and horrific the crime, the coming storm, and the relationship crisis that I felt the immediacy and urgency that drove this one. Manfred and his grandmother Xylda make their appearance and have their part. Harper really took an emotional and physical beating in this one and that last suspenseful scene had me on the edge of my seat.
Unputdownable from cover to cover. The hint from Xylda’s ‘seeing’ about what is to come has me all the eager to get to the final book in the series. If one likes a darker mystery with ghostly and psychic elements, scare this series up for your TBR pile.
About Charlaine Harris
Tired of abiding by the mystery rules, Harris wrote a novel about a telepathic barmaid that took at least two years to sell. When the book was published, it turned into a best seller, and DEAD UNTIL DARK and the subsequent Sookie books were adapted in Alan Ball’s “True Blood” series. At the same time, Harris began the Harper Connelly books. Harper can find the bones of the dead and see their last minute.
When those two series wound to a close, the next three books were about a mysterious town in Texas, called Midnight.
A change in publisher and editor led to Harris’s novels about a female gunslinger in an alternate America, Lizbeth Rose. The Gunnie Rose books concluded with the sixth novel.
She’s thinking about what to write next.
As a lifelong reader, it was inevitable that Sophia would discover book blogs and the joy of blog reviewing.Sophia is a prolific reader and audiobook listener which allows her to experience so many wonderful books, authors, and narrators.Few genres are outside her reading tastes, but her true love is fiction particularly history, mystery, sci-fi, and romance.Though, sorry, no horror or she will run like Shaggy and Scooby.
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Your reviews of this series have certainly piqued my interest, but this latest one may be too dark for me.
Glad to tickle your interest. But yes, this one is darker and edgier than the earlier two books and then it lights a bit in the fourth.
I think I would like this one.
I second that, Mary! 🙂
“Harper really took an emotional and physical beating in this one” poor thing
Yeah, this was a heavy hitter.
I am tempted by this series! Less intimidating than her long running one.
I agree. I’m always much more tempted to start a new series when they are under a half-dozen books when I find them. I felt this one ended at a good spot since it resolved all the big plot threads.