Saturday, December 23, 2006

#76 A Bone To Pick: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery by Charlaine Harris

My Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

I didn't like this second book in the series as much as Real Murders, if only because there wasn't as much murder going on. :p

In this installment, Roe inherits the estate of her friend Jane Engle, a seventy year old "sweet old lady" who was formerly in the Real Murders club with her. Roe's got no idea why Jane would leave the house to her, but Jane's lawyer, Bubba Sewell, tells her that Jane has only a single brother left still living, who's pretty old himself, and she left him her car, her cat, and a few thousand dollars. But Roe is inheriting Jane's house, along with all it's contents and $550,000! Which is apparently a pretty good windfall down South! (Up here it'd barely buy a nice house. LOL)

Anyhow, it's the skull that Roe discovers inside Jane's house that's got her curious... just whose skull is it? And do the recent mysterious break-ins in the neighborhood—where nothing was taken, just houses ransacked—have anything to do with it? This mystery gets wrapped up at the end, but I won't give any spoilers here to ruin it.

We also learn a little more about Roe's personal life, and her longing to find a good man and get married. She's no longer with either of the two men she dated in Real Murders. The police detective Arthur has married his partner Lynn. And Robin Crusoe left the townhouse to go live in the city, and then went off to Europe for a little while, stepping back as Roe had gotten more serious (or so she thought) with Arthur. It's a little uncomfortable for Roe when she finds out that Arthur and Lynn have just bought the house across the street from the one she inherited from Jane, and to top it off, Lynn's already pregnant. (Can we say shotgun wedding! LOL) So Roe's now dating the town's Episcopal minister, Aubrey Scott, who performed her mother's recent wedding to John Queensland.

I think if Ms. Harris didn't make the rest of the story fairly entertaining, it would've flopped because the wondering of this skull is the only mystery part to this story... Roe does a little sleuthing, but since she doesn't mention the skull to anyone else, it's not a subject for dinner-time conversation or anything among her friends, acquaintances, and new neighbors, at least not until the rest of the skeleton is discovered. *grin*

BookCrossing journal page for this book