Second Grave on the Left

Second Grave on the Left

Well, at least it was light reading.

Second Grave on the Left is the second in the Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones. It's basically in the same genre as the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, but nowhere, nowhere near as good. (You can even tell that Jones is going to use the word "grave" in all her titles -- just as Harris uses "dead".)

Charley Davidson is a private detective with supernatural powers. Specifically, she's the Grim Reaper, which in this case means she's the portal through which the dead can pass to get to Heaven. (Apparently some of them manage to do it on their own, or she'd be a whole lot busier.) She can see ghosts, and communicate with them, which gives her an advantage as a PI. As far as I can tell, it's her only advantage, as she certainly doesn't seem too smart or too resourceful. Mostly, she just flits around and does things on the spur of the moment with no thought as to repercussions or consequences. She also unmercifully bosses around her faithful little doormat, er, sidekick, Cookie. And she wisecracks. Continually. Like, every other sentence. You can practically hear the rimshots.

She also has a supernatural entity boyfriend, who, apparently, has been stalking her since birth. (I won't tell you what he is, because although it's no secret in this book, apparently it was in the first.) There are a lot of hot, steamy encounters with him, which of necessity are of the delayed gratification type -- primarily because he's not in his corporate form through most of this.

Oh, yes, the plot. There are two of them, and I couldn't tell you which one is supposed to be the main one. One involves a series of apparent homicides that involve a friend of Cookie's and apparently go back to that friend's high school days. The other plot concerns the necessity of saving Charley's boyfriend from torture and a fate worse than death -- for everybody. You won't care about either of the plots, I promise you.