Real Murders

by Charlaine Harris
1990 – Berkley Prime Crime Books

Charlaine Harris is the intensely popular author of the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire novels, which I happen to love. (the 8th one From Dead to Worse is coming out May 6) Her Aurora Teagarden novels feature a perky librarian as the main character so, of course, I had to read this book.
In the first book of this series, Aurora Teagarden is a member of a group that calls themselves the Real Murders Club. They meet once a month and discuss past crimes, the what, the how, the who and the when. When someone starts killing people in a copycat fashion, Aurora finds herself in the middle of the “real murders” that she’s only studied on paper.
Even though it’s full of gross murder, it’s a pretty fun story. I love that a fair number of the scenes are in the library where she works, and it sets things up really well for the other books in the series. The story is really suspenseful so you want to get to the end to find out who did it. There were some negatives. There are a lot of characters so it was a little confusing until you got further into it, and because it was written in 1990, parts of it are really dated. No one has cell phones and the main character doesn’t even have an answering machine. Also, when the author described their “hip” outfits, I just laughed.
I hope to read more books in the series sometime soon, but I’m in no rush. For now, I think I’ll stick with the Sookie books.