Paromjit's Reviews > A Beautiful Corpse

This is the 2nd in the crime reporter, Harper McClain series set in the small town of Savannah, Georgia. This worked fine as a standalone but I should warn there are major spoilers here about events that occurred in the first book. A 24 year old woman, Naomi Scott, is shot twice in the tourist district of town. Harper and her best friend, Bonnie, arrive on the scene only to discover to their horror that they knew the victim, and had seen her earlier in the night. Naomi had worked part time as a bartender with Bonnie at The Library Bar. She was beautiful, ambitious and compassionate, a promising law student, with a boyfriend, Wilson Shepherd. The prime suspect for the police is Wilson, after all, most women are murdered by someone close, who claim to love them, the most ordinary murder of all. This is a big story and Harper investigates, only this turns out to be a thorny and complex dangerous investigation.

Harper carries the scars and nightmares of previous events that ended in her being shot, and led to her being considered a pariah by Savannah PD, as she nailed a highly respected killer from their own ranks. The police are an unforgiving bunch as they refuse to share information and harrass her, preventing her from doing her job. Harper is forced to deal with this issue head on, but she has other problems, further job cuts at Savannah News threatens her job, and someone is breaking into her apartment on an ongoing basis. Then there is the murder of Harper's mother when she was a child, and Harper is desperate to find her murderer, and she is willing to do whatever it takes. Harper's personal relationship with Detective Luke Walker was a casualty of previous events, but he now enters her life again, will it all end in tears again? Wilson Shepherd turns out to be not the only suspect in Naomi's killing, there is the son of the DA, and looking into him carries the inherent dangers of taking on the most powerful of forces in town. Then there is the owner of The Library Bar, Fitz, spending most of his town inebriated. Will Harper be able to find the killer whilst the police struggle?

Christi Daugherty writes highly entertaining crime fiction and her protagonist, Harper, proves to be feisty and determined character, vulnerable with a traumatic history, which really makes you root for her. She has a solid cast of characters and friends that are there for her and help in getting to the truth of what happened to Naomi. Her workplace has its own dramas, with her boss, Emma Baxter, doing her best to shield Harper from the intrigues within the higher echelons of management. This is wonderfully engaging crime fiction that never failed to hold my interest, and I am certainly planning to read the next in the series. Many thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC.