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The Barnes & Noble Review
Welcome back to Shakespeare, a charming little place in rural Arkansas filled with eccentric characters, small-town secrets, and captivating criminal conundrums. For more than four years now, Lily Bard has made her home in Shakespeare, cleaning houses for a living and honing her fighting skills at the local karate dojo. It hasn't been easy for Lily to put her tragic past behind her, but after years of prickly isolation she's finally beginning to build some real relationships. She has a lover she adores and friends who are more than sparring partners.
Then one day, while walking down an unmarked road, an unexpected flash of bright red catches her eye, and Lily immediately senses that something is very wrong. Her worst fears come to pass when the flash of red turns out to be a car holding the naked remains of Deedra Dean, one of Lily's cleaning clients and a lifelong Shakespeare resident with a well-earned reputation for cheerful amateur promiscuity.
Cleaning up houses is Lily's job, and cleaning up crime is a matter for the police -- especially in when the list of suspects is long and evidence is in short supply. But Shakespeare is a small town. The police have questions, Lily's friends have concerns, and Deedra's mother hires Lily to sort through her daughter's belongings. Among the detritus of the dead girl's life, Lily finds not only proof of Deedra's secret sins but dangerous evidence of darker crimes. Charlaine Harris (who is also the author of the popular Aurora Teagarden mysteries) is sure to captivate readers with this fourth cleverly crafted and compelling Lily Bard adventure. Sue Stone
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
"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 Cahners Business Information.|
Library Journal
Series lead Lily Bard, a karate-kicking cleaning lady, discovers the body of a promiscuous woman in a lonely area of Shakespeare, AR. When the police develop no leads, Lily steps in. Solid entertainment. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
