Grave Sight

Book 1: Grave Sight
Book 2: Grave Surprise
Book 3: An Ice Cold Grave

Gollancz (2006)
ISBN:0425212890
US$7.99
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Reviewed by Angela Slatter, May 2007

It starts so well on page one:

“The silent witnesses lie everywhere, passing from one form of matter to another, gradually becoming unrecognizable to their nearest and dearest. Their bodies are rolled into gullies, shut in the trunks of abandoned cars, harnessed to cement blocks and throw down to the bottom of lakes. Those more hastily discarded are tossed on the side of the highway - so that life, having swerved away, can swiftly pass them by without pausing to look.”

Promisingly intriguing and intriguingly promising. There's a nice light touch on the language, which suggests some talent with, and consideration for, words. So, what's the story?

Our protagonist and first person narrator is Harper Connolly, daughter and step-daughter of variously dead, disbarred and debaucherous lawyers. As a result of being struck by lightning at the age of fourteen, Harper can locate the dead and know exactly what killed them. She travels the US with her stepbrother-cum-manager, Tolliver Lang (cool name). Armed with the baggage of drunken, junkie parents, a stolen sister, and various other childhood traumas, they stay in cheap motels, find bodies, pick up pay cheques, deal with hostile law enforcement agents, fundamentalist Christians who think Harper's talent comes from Satan himself, and generally a lot of people who dislike our heroine on sight. Most of this dislike seems to stem from a distaste for the fact that Harper charges for her services. I'm not sure why this causes so much angst, given that any number of psychics, palm readers, water dousers, etc, all charge for their services, and generally don't get tarred and feathered and/or run out of town on a rail - although Small Town, USA may well still be mired in the Middle Ages as regards anything remotely 'witchy'. Perhaps it's also got a lot to do with Harper, who can be long on sass and selfishness, short on charm and empathy.

In Grave Sight Harper is hired to find the missing Teenie's Hopkins, whose boyfriend Dell was found shot dead a few months ago. The good people of Sarne (small town in the Ozarks) have assumed that Dell shot Teenie, then killed himself. Dell's mum wants to know the truth. Harper finds Teenie's body, confirms that both Dell and Teenie were murdered, collects her pay cheque, and leaves. Alas, nothing's ever that easy - she and Tolliver are recalled by the Sheriff when Teenie's mother, Helen, is found beaten to death. One of the local deputies, a widower who gets sweet on our Harper, has her stand on the grave of his wife, Sally (Teenie's sister) - yep, she was murdered too. Add into the mix the cabal of leading citizens: Mayor Terry Vale (a man with a finger in every pie) who recommended Harper's services; Sheriff Branscom, who doesn't like the idea of Harper at all; lawyer and handsome-man-about-town, Paul Edwards; and Dell's mum, the widowed Sybil, who is also the Sheriff's sister and Paul Edwards' bonk-buddy. The bodies start to pile up, Tolliver gets thrown in jail, and a person or persons unknown try to shoot Harper. Intrigue, deception, secrecy and murder, just like the jacket says.

What was good about it? The idea is clever and I enjoyed the story. Harper's talent is sufficient to find bodies, while its limitations ensure that she gets into enough trouble to progress the story. The pace is good and never slows to the point where it feels like you're pedalling backwards in treacle. Generally the dialogue is snappy enough to raise a smile and keep things moving along.

What was wrong with it? Well, because I am an anal retentive nerd, I will tell you, or the highlights at the very least. For starters there's some sloppy editing, which includes “Dell” becoming “Dale” (p.117); and this cracker, “The waitress had filled my coffee cup and taken my first swallow” (p.10) - oh, really? Are small town coffee shops employing waitresses as food-tasters? Or is there a little word missing? Big smacks for the proof-reader.

There are some 'continuity' issues: when the group of high school bully-boys gang up on Harper during her morning run, one of them announces “We already told you to leave town” (p.136) - ah, actually, a close reading shows that he didn't. On p.132 Hollis (the hot, lovesick deputy) has a McDonald's meal bag in his hand, but by p.136 it has morphed in a tray (cannot trust those McDonald's meal bags).

There are some tedious info-dumps and repetition of information, which seems to imply that the reader has the memory span of a goldfish. On at least three occasions Harper explains that her right leg hurts because it was damaged by the lightning strike that gave her the 'gift'. The deputy is referred to by his full name “Hollis Boxleitner” constantly until halfway through the novel - there's not an over-abundance of Hollises in this book, so we don't need to have him tagged every time - we're not going to think “Hey, is that Hollis Simpson, Hollis Tanaka or Hollis Horowitz?” There is only one.

There's the lazy language stuff, which always enrages me - the rage can vary from a simple facial tic, all the way through to something bearing a striking resemblance to a full-blown, profanity-laden attack of Tourette's Syndrome. “He said finally, in a final voice” (p.172) caused a vein to jump in my forehead. When Harper announces to the antagonist on p.260 “Now your life is over”, a tic started under my left eye. The description of an action as “preplanned” on p.79 led to some low-level swearing and muttering “Isn't planning what you do? How do you preplan a plan?” I started to take deep, calming breaths after “In a desperate attempt to save my own life” (p. 251) - is there any other kind? An apathetic attempt? A frivolous attempt? There's the 'boy-howdy' dialect, which occurs in the first few pages but disappears fairly quickly and (I'm glad to say) doesn't resurface - but honestly, unless you're going to be consistent, then just don't it - it's jarring. Of course, there is the piece de resistance on p.71, which, had I not been on a train, surrounded by witnesses, would have caused me to throw the book: “… and he's full of anger like a volcano's full of lava”.

Some stuff just doesn't make sense, like asking if a relationship was violent before a restraining order was taken out (p.135) - isn't that the point of a restraining order?! When Harper and Deputy Dawg get down and dirty, she comments (obviously gripped by afterglow) that “he had a delicate snore that made me feel all cozy” (p.151) - no woman, in the entire history of the world has ever been made to feel “cozy” by a man snoring. It is, in fact, the leading cause of otherwise law-abiding women picking up a pillow and holding it over their significant other's face until he stops breathing.

The forensic element of the story is pretty light on - I know we're in a small town, but surely, a deputy vomiting on a crime scene is not good procedure. How about the failure to find a body located not that far from the first body? That should have been taken care of by a careful grid search. Or cadaver dogs? Cadaver dogs, as their name suggests, find cadavers - they can smell them, even when tracker dogs can't actually track someone. How about methane probes? Or what about when Harper wonders if an autopsy can establish if a victim was pregnant? Maybe I watch too much CSI (alright, I definitely watch too much CSI), but my point is, if you're writing crime, make it convincing, sound informed.

I'm also at a loss as to a) why someone who has curly hair needs a hair curler, b) why someone whose fateful lightning strike occurred when she was using a hair curler would continue to use such a dangerous grooming instrument, and yet c) avoids talking on phones when there's lightning about because she is afraid of being struck?

Characterisations are somewhat problematic, with some characters little more than stereotypes: Sybil as hard-faced, ice-blonde; Sheriff Branscom as irascible/curmudgeonly but ultimately honourable small-town cop; Hollis as dim but good-hearted deputy pining for the girl he shouldn't have; Tolliver as conflicted but loyal root-rat stepbrother who always comes back to his stepsister; one of the other deputies relies so heavy on the Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel as law enforcement stereotype I started hearing the Deliverance theme in my head. I'd like to see evidence of thesaurus usage so the words “round”, “stout” and “handsome” don't constantly crop up as the main adjectives.

Harper is a bit like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone - but with powers and periodically less likeable. Her difficult childhood is supposed to explain these shortcomings but sometimes it's hard to feel sympathy for her. The incident that jarred the most for me was when one of Harper's young half-sisters runs away. Harper's own full-blood sister, Cameron, disappeared many years ago after being snatched off the street in broad daylight. This devastated Harper, yet when her estranged aunt calls to ask her to find the missing Mariella, she hangs up, saying “Besides I only find dead people. You look for her. Call the police, of course. I bet you haven't” (p. 170). It's cruel, childish, selfish and beyond merely 'flawed'. Surely she'd put aside past resentment and try to find her sister? I found it a bit much to swallow that she would dismiss this disappearance so breezily and spitefully.

Then there's the romance element - you know, it's a Gollancz Romancz (“Cheese-factor 10, Cap'n, I canna make her any cheesier”). It moves swiftly from Harper and Hollis' first encounter with the quite sweet “We went to his small house later, gaining a little comfort and warmth from each other” (p.110) to “You practically break into my house, and I want to fuck you right here on the floor” (p.196) - leading to “It was short and violent and the most exciting encounter I've ever experienced” (p.197). Now I know Harper doesn't get out much, but really. Where's the romance part? The flowers? The courtship? The cuddling? Can we rename it the Gollancz Shagancz imprint?

Was the ending satisfying? I guess - I was wrong about the bad guy, but the shoot-out needs some work. It made me long for anything by Irish writer, John Connolly, whose specfic-inflected crime novels always contain at least one excellent shoot-out scene.

Ultimately, the novel's failings are slopping editing, lazy stereotyping, and a fair bit of telling instead of showing. Do these outweigh the good bits? A less anal retentive reader may have simply read this quite happily and unquestioningly. Had I received this as a submission from a student, I would have sent it back with edits along the lines of the above. I would have said “Good first draft, young one, now go away and make it better” - which is what Harris' editor should have done with Grave Sight. Would I read another Charlaine Harris? Yes, if only to see if her first Harper Connolly novel was a tighter, better edited work. Grave Sight is the second book in Harris' Harper Connolly series. Harris is quite prolific - visit the website http://www.charlaineharris.com/. I didn't hate it - but parts of made me angry.