GRAVE SURPRISE

Being struck by lightning has given Harper Connelly (Grave Sight, 2005, etc.) the ability to find dead bodies and know what killed them—a spooky talent that earns her a living and places her in frequent danger.

Clyde Nunley is a professor at a Memphis-area college who loves to debunk paranormal behavior. When he invites Harper Connelly to visit an old campus graveyard where records labeling the bodies and causes of death have just been discovered, she confounds him as she works through the graves, correctly identifying each manner of death, until she comes to one she knows contains a recent burial. The body is that of Tabitha Morgenstern, 11, whose body Harper had tried and failed to find 18 months earlier. Harper’s stepbrother Tolliver, her manager and traveling companion, had had a brief affair with Tabitha’s aunt. The skeptical police consider Harper a prime suspect when Nunley turns up dead in the same grave after verbally abusing Harper in a hotel lobby. Because Harper and Tolliver come from a dysfunctional family, they recognize problems among the Morgensterns, and they soon unearth many snippets of information that never came to light in the original investigation. The amateur sleuths have their own near-death experience before the killer is discovered.

Believers and skeptics alike will enjoy Harper’s search for the truth and her changing relationship with Tolliver.