Real Murders

This book was also recommended by my local library and even though it was written some time ago, I thought that I would give it a try. The premise was interesting with a club called "Real Murders" in which people gathered monthly to look at true crimes and discuss the details of a particular case, but there is a murder at the VFW hall where their meeting is and everyone becomes a suspect. Several more murders take place and it is clear that the killer or killers are copying old crimes.

This is the first book that I have read by Charlaine Harris and I thought that it was fairly well written. It kind of reminded me of "Murder She Wrote" even though the main character, Aurora, is a great deal younger than the Jessica Fletcher character of the former. Harris does a fairly decent job at developing her main character Aurora, but almost borderlines with stereotyping her as a librarian that eventually lets her hair down to be adventurous. The story also moved along quite steadily and did not seem to have too many awkward pauses, but there were some editing issues that should have been resolved before print. I also felt that with it being in first person point of view, the story did not suffer from lack of information either with regards to the crimes. In that respect, it was very developed.

Sadly, the overall feel of the book was rather dull. There were quite a few characters introduced in the book and not all of them were needed. Harris develops some that should be left in the shadows and then skips over others that should be more fleshed out. There is also the unnecessary love triangle between Aurora, Arthur the detective, and Robin the writer. I wish that Harris would have chosen one of them to be the main love interest and then explore that a little more in the book. There just seemed to be several sub plots that were not important and made the whole book drag on as it was being read.

However, I did find the overall theme of the book intriguing and therefore would recommend it to individuals that enjoy mysteries of the 1990's. However, if you like more streamline mystery novels where you are constantly asking why the main character doesn't just use their cell phone to call the police, then this novel would not be for you.

Rating: 2 out 5

I borrowed this book from my local library; I was not asked to do a review of this book.

The image was taken from Good Reads.