Shakespeare's Trollop

This is the 4th installment in the Lily Bard series by Charlaine Harris set in the small town of Shakespeare, Arkansas (preceded by Shakepeare's Landlord, Shakespeare's Champion, Shakespeare's Christmas). Lily originally came here to hide from the publicity and terrible memories of having been kidnapped, tortured and raped as a young woman. She makes her living as a cleaning person which gives her rather unique insight into people's character. Not surprisingly, she is the one to sense something fishy about the apparently sexually motivated murder of the town's "loose woman," Deidre Dean. Deidre may have been careless with her body, but she was fastidious with her belongings and she just would NOT have thrown her clothes and pearl necklace over a  tree branch where they could be damaged, nor, for that matter, would she ever have been likely to have sex in the woods instead of her bedroom. Lily does not want to become involved, but when a fire is started in the home of another one of her clients and eventually he dies, she just can't help trying to figure it all out. Meanwhile, she is sort of, kind of, starting to feel like she belongs in this town and she is sort of, kind of, feeling that her very occasional relationship with Jack is just too important. Apparently he thinks likewise, and the results may surprise followers of the series. Lily is a wonderfully dark but resilient character who is working hard to move on with her life. I really like her and these books are well written; the whole series has been great and this one is no exception. I only have one left (Shakespeare's Counselor) so I hope she writes another one soon!