Before striking gold with her Southern vampire series, Harris paid the bills by writing mysteries, apparently quite good ones. This 1981 debut novel was well met by critics. Here, Catherine Linton returns to her hometown of Lowfield, MS, following the demise of her parents. She believes their deaths weren't an accident. She's right. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In the tiny southern town of Lowfield, Catherine Linton is recovering from the recent death of her parents in a car crash--the foul-play work of some unknown culprit. Furthermore, Catherine's quiet life--she works for the local paper, renting her doctor-father's old offices to fellow reporter Torn Mascalco--is shattered when she finds the bludgeoned body of Leona Gaites, her father's longtime nurse (a lady with sidelines in abortion and blackmail). Indeed, as Cathy soon discovers, there are lots of guilty secrets in Lowfield. . . which lead to yet another murder. But not until she answers a summons from the Linton family's retired maid does Catherine finally put it all together (with a newspaper-story connection) and finger the villain. Tidy, if not watertight, plotting; a convincing motive; an appealingly three-dimensional romance between Catherine and her editor. It all adds up to a nice, quiet debut--nothing special, but unpretentiously agreeable. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Before the Southern Vampire series, Harris wrote more traditional mysteries. Sweet and Deadly, her first published book, has been brought back into print after nearly 30 years. Set in the small town of Lowfield, Mississippi, it is a gothic-influenced novel about a series of murders starting with the town doctor and his wife. Six months later, newspaper reporter Catherine, the daughter of the murdered couple, discovers a body at an abandoned cabin on the family land. At first, Catherine is the only one who believes that the new murder is connected to her parents' death, but her eager fellow reporter, Tom, desperate for a big story, joins her investigation, and together they begin to uncover a plethora of small-town secrets. Taut, tense, and compelling, this stellar debut is a terrific small-town mystery. While Sookie fans may miss the vampires, they will be enchanted with tough, lonely Catherine and will find some similarities in the insular setting.--Moyer, Jessica Copyright 2010 Booklist