Now best known for her New York Times bestselling Sookie Stackhouse novels, Charlaine Harris garnered an unusual degree of acclaim with her first novel--the story of a murder that embroils a small-town reporter in a mystery that hits close to home.
Catherine Linton has returned to her hometown of Lowfield, Mississippi, unconvinced that the death of her parents in a car crash six months earlier was an accident. And her suspicions are confirmed when she stumbles upon the dead and beaten body of her doctor-father's longtime nurse. There are secrets being kept in Lowfield. And the town where Catherine grew up may be the same place where she is sent to her grave...
Reviews
Sweet and Deadly combines astute depiction of a Southern town with a crackling good mystery plot...Sweet and Deadly has a little of everything: rich regional authenticity, good dialogue, interesting characters instead of stereotypes, and taut suspense. The heroine is a self-sufficient woman who can shoot a gun and has true grit. The sheriff is a well-drawn character and so is the killer, whose motive will stun the reader. Charlaine Harris has a great future as a writer. -- Savannah News-Press
Sweet and Deadly is billed as 'a southern mystery,' and it does have that slow, sittin'-in-the-shade quality as it lazily rolls to a shocker ending. -- The Des Moines Register
As much novel as mystery as it explores the complex character and secrets of a small Southern town. -- Wichita Eagle-Beacon
Charlaine Harris is a name to remember, not only because she has written an engrossing first novel about multiple murders but also because she has set that mystery in a small Southern town that Southern readers will find familiar and credible. -- The Macon Telegraph & News
Engaging. Harris's style has a charm and ease that remind one of Anne Tyler...original and surprising. Traces of Gothic romance add to the book's unusual flavor. -- The Christian Science Monitor
Harris writes neatly and with assurance, and she avoids the goo that makes equivalent books so sticky. -- The New York Times Book Review
Introducing an author of rare talents, this mystery is set in a small town on the Mississippi Delta that Harris makes excitingly real...Harris artfully keeps the mask on the killer until the stunning conclusion. -- Publishers Weekly
Packs a perennial punch. It offers a rarity in popular fiction: an unromanticized portrait of a Southern Girl. -- Philadelphia Inquirer
