SHAKESPEARE'S LANDLORD - Charlaine Harris

Though a "True Blood" fan, this was my first time reading Charlaine Harris, and (admittedly) I probably started here because the premise of this series seemed so intriguing.  Lily Bard is a "lone wolf" - a single woman of about thirty who lives by and keeps to herself in her newly-adopted town of Shakespeare, Arkansas.  She cleans houses for a living, is quiet and makes no friends ... and one late night on the way home, spots a furtive figure sneaking into a park across the street from her building, pushing the large trash can she keeps under her carport.  As she watches, the unidentifiable figure dumps something in a huge trash bag there, then returns the can empty - and when Lily checks out the bag, she finds the body of her former landlord from next door.  As Lily starts poking around, we not only learn about her neighbors and the tenants of the murdered man's building, but also the horrifying reason behind why Lily keeps to herself, trusts no one, and is obsessed with learning self-defense.  While by no means a typical one-dimenstional "cozy" mystery (in fact, most of the negative reviews you will read of this title tend to be from people who thought it was, and take exception with both author and Lily with what amounts to the reader's errror), Harris has instead crafted both a story and especially heroine/detective who, though rather solemn, comes off strong, complex and wholly three-dimensional on the page.  ****1/2