Shakespeare’s Counselor

Shakespeare’s Counselor (2001) Charlaine Harris

My complaint about this book is that it was too engrossing. I laid down just to read a couple of chapters, and two hours later I found myself two-thirds of the way into the book, and not going to sleep early as I’d planned. Here I felt bad and wanted to get some extra rest, and I ended up going to be later than usual. And it’s entirely Charlaine Harris’ fault, since if she wans’t such a good write, I would have been able to put down the book abd go to sleep.

Okay, I don’t really mean that. I just wish I would have realized how good the story was going to be, and not started reading it on a week night.

I first came across Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse stories, which can be best classified as erotic vampire mysteries. I enjoyed those mysteries so much that I wanted to read a different series, to see if I liked it as much.

I found Shakespeare’s Counselor used a snatched it up. I’m glad I did, because like the Sookie Stackhouse stories, this book is good and I quite enjoyed it. Although there are four books that come before this one, I didn’t feel as if I was missing anything by not having read the previous four, which is quite important in a mystery series.

Charlaine Harris is very good at writing interesting, admirable, characters. I love the fact that Lily Bard worries about paying bills and pinches pennies and buys her clothes at Wal Mart and makes her living as a cleaning lady. It makes her seem far more real than some other female detectives I’ve read.

Be aware, one of the themes in this book is rape–the counselor of the title runs a rape recovery group therapy session, so I would not recommend it for a younger reader. But the subject is covered very honestly, and I don’t think that it should scare off anyone else.

As much as I enjoyed this book, I fear, however, that I may have to take up her Aurora Teagarden series, as Shakespeare’s Counselor seems to be the last Lily Bard mystery published, and that was back in 2001, and according to her website, she isn’t planning on any more Lily Bard mysteries. But I find it hard to complain, if it means she’s writing more about Sookie Stackhouse.
Rating: 8/10

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