Shakespeare's Champion

The eponymous champion is one Del Packard, a blond body builder who came in second in a regional body-building extravaganza in Little Rock last year. He won’t be competing this year, unfortunately, as he’s been murdered.

Who would kill a dim-witted, unoffending clerk in a sporting goods store in little ol’ Shakespeare, Ark.? Observant cleaner Lily Bard doesn’t intend to get involved, but the murder happened in the gym she visits nearly every day, and she notices more and more odd occurrences. But what’s going on is much, more worse than she could have anticipated.

I adored this twisty page-turner even more than the first book in the series, the five-star Shakespeare’s Landlord — and that’s high praise indeed.

"Shakespeare's Champion", the second Lily Bard mystery, confirmed to me that I'm hooked on the series.

Unfortunately, the plot of this book was give given away in Charlaine Harris' latest book, "Midnight Crossroad", so I already knew a lot of what would happen. That I still enjoyed the book is a tribute to how well written it is and how focused it is on the development of Lily Bard.

The "Champion" of the title is a body-builder who is murdered in the gym Lily uses. The plot focuses around the actions of a secretive white supremacist group that has sprung up in Shakespeare and the people who are trying to stop them.

Part of the strength of the book comes from the fact that Lily is cast neither as Civil Rights Activist nor as a vigilante but show more as a woman trying to get by without drawing attention to herself but unable to turn away when people are being hurt.

Lily sees herself as being able to do two things well: clean and fight. She sees a great deal of what is going on around her but does not comment on it. She is more likely to offer help or violence than words. She does what she thinks should be done and she refuses to back down from those who threaten her.

But Lily is not a hard-boiled action-hero. The book shows her compassion in helping the sick and comforting the dying, her empathy with those who have been hurt, and her reflex to intervene when violence is being done to those who can't defend themselves.

Lily doesn't set out, Miss Marple, style to investigate the white supremacist group but her job and her social contacts in Shakespeare mean she is in the wrong place at the wrong time often enough to be drawn into the action.

There are some powerful scenes in this book. For me, the most powerful describes Lily's involvement in a bombing and its aftermath. This is an up close and personal view of what this kind of violence does to those involved in it. It is beautifully and convincingly written.

The book confronts some difficult small town topics: racial tension; the reaction to a promiscuous white woman who has sex with, among others, a black man; Christian fundamentalist who believe that God speaks through them and that those who oppose them are not just wrong but evil; men who attack women; packs of men who commit violence; corrupt police officers who turn a blind eye or even lend a hand; the social mores that mean that none of this gets discussed in polite society. I don't think it sets out to be a politically correct, liberal book. These issues are filtered primarily by Lily's view of the world, not political dogma. Lily believes in evil, expects little of other people, hates bullies and bigots, sees promiscuity as an act of stupid carelessness because it makes the woman so vulnerable, and understands at a bone deep level, that victims are not responsible for the harm done to them.

In this book, Lily has started to understand that she is not strongly enough attracted to either of the men in the first book to be more than friends with them. That she wants to maintain that friendship and build others with some of the women around her, shows a desire to expand the narrow life she had been living. The arrival of stranger (yes, he is tall, dark and handsome) with a past as troubled and complex as her own, gives her someone new to value and changes her priorities in ways that drive the plot in interesting directions.

The only thing I would change in the book is the prologue. I often find these things irritating because they seem to imply that I will only read a book if I'm shown in the first few pages that something dramatic is going to happen real soon, honest. This particular prologue adds little to the book. The information it gives could have been presented with more skill and more context later. I'd have preferred to have done without it.

But that's a small niggle. I enjoyed the book a great deal. By the end of it, I liked Lily when previously I had only admired her. Her world and her relationships have become real to me and I want to know more.

There are three more novels in the series. I feel a Lily Bard fest coming on. show less

I enjoyed reading a new adventure in Lilly's neck of the woods. As you have expected, in Shakespeare's Champion, the second book in the Lily Bard series, Lily gets drawn into another mystery when she discovers the body of a murdered bodybuilder. This unsettling event coincides with a rise in white supremacist activity in Shakespeare, Arkansas, creating a tense atmosphere of fear and suspicion.
One of my favorite things is Charlaine Hariss' way of drawing you in with atmospheric writing. Great storytelling. You can feel the small-town life as Lilly investigates the murder and confronts the growing threat of extremism.
We also get a new character and a new love interest for Lilly. To be honest, I'm not sure how to feel about it given her show more past trauma. Does she really need a different love interest in each book? It sure makes the plot more interesting whether I like it or not.
All in all, Shakespeare's Champion deepens Lily's character arc, showcasing her resilience and resourcefulness as she faces both personal and societal challenges. The story is a well-written mix of mystery, suspense, and social commentary, leaving you eager to see what adventures await Lily in the next installment of the series. show less

Heh heh heh....ok i'm HOOKED. Harris is awesome and her books are the kind of fun reading I remember loving. I love the characters and I love the crap that Lily somehow always gets involved in.

I also loved the racial tones that the book had. I enjoy reading novels that can be related to social issues that still occur. I think it's more potent and that literature helps to show a side of society and life that most people choose to ignore. The storyline helps to develop and illustrate how much the world around us isn't any better in 2011 as it was in 1951, which is a point to be made when novels that discuss this issue take place in the South. The bombing of the church after the beating to death and killing of a black man, it really hits show more home that in the 21st century, people and society are still deeply embroiled in this problem.

Seriousness aside, this novel was much more dark and violent than the first. I still had fun reading it, but it was a lot darker than I anticipated it would be. I also like the introduction of Jack as Lily's partner. He is honestly a great foil for her and he seems to be a character like Claude and Carrie. All three characters understand Lily and get her on a level that Marshall never seemed to, as well as all the other characters around her did. Jack works for Lily and Carrie works for Claude, happiness is settled.

I also loved the ending of the book, and how Lily faked irrational behavior to explain the help that she got from Mookie. The book works, it ties together, and it doesn't end in cliffhangers. The book ends as if the series won't continue. LOVE IT! show less

Shakespeare's Champion
4.5 Stars

Still waters run deep in Shakespeare, Arkansas and when Lily Bard finds the corpse of the local body building champion, little does she know that the discovery will uncover a web of the most heinous evil in her seemingly innocuous small town.

The second installment in this cozy mystery series is just as appealing as the first, although the mystery is definitely darker and more violent with several truly sad and shocking moments. At this point, it is necessary to provide a warning that the book deals with issues of race, which some readers may find offensive. Personally, I believe that these topics should be faced head on and treated realistically (which they are here) for to deny that prejudice and evil show more exist, or to conceal them out of misplaced sense of political correctness, is to allow them to grow and to fester.

Now that that is out of the way …

Charlaine Harris is a very skilled writer who makes even the most mundane of activities, such as house cleaning and gym workouts seem exciting. Her character development is also excellent and each of the residents of Shakespeare, good, bad or ugly, is fleshed out well and contributes to both the small town atmosphere and the message inherent in the story.

In terms of the romance, there is a significant improvement as Lily parts ways with her uninspired love interest from book #1 and closes the door on another potential beau (which was a little disappointing as he is quite sweet). Instead, she becomes involved with a rather mysterious stranger who turns out to have scars of his own and is a much better fit for Lily’s tough and stalwart persona. It is obvious that she would eat any other less dominant man alive.

Julia Gibson’s narration makes for pleasant listening and she does a good job with the male and female voices. There are still some gaps between sections (albeit shorter than in book 1) and Gibson does swallow audibly one or two times, which is distracting.

In sum, this is a very enjoyable sequel and Lily with her mix of strength and vulnerability is a lovely character. show less

I'm glad Charlaine Harris and I are pals again. I was hoping that would happen if I picked up some of her older stuff. Lily Bard is a great character: taciturn, blunt, brave and tough. In the first two books, I've enjoyed seeing her come out of her shell, befriending (or more accurately, allowing herself to be befriended by)both men and women after keeping to herself for so long. And it's all because of murder. Thank you, murder!

This time around, I didn't figure out anything before it was revealed except that Jared (Jack) was probably a detective of some kind and not a baddie. This is another twisty-turny one. The mystery is better plotted than the romance, which plays out at a dizzying speed. I'm glad Marshall didn't last long, I show more felt briefly sorry for Claude (Claude and Marshall are not good names for the male romantic lead anyway-that was bugging me. Although this was written in the 90s; maybe that's when the name Marshall was having its heyday. I don't know that the name Claude ever had a heyday. Even though things with Jack moved alarmingly fast, I did like him as a love interest) Even that doesn't really bother me to any great extent, because I like Lily so much, and the mysteries have been good so far. It's nice to see that CH can write more than one female protagonist (although the number of times Sookie and Lily get the crap kicked out of them in one novel is disturbingly similar, and Lily seems to bounce back almost as soon as Sookie does with supernatural help).

On to the next! show less

I am very glad I took the lead from a fellow LibraryThing-er's encouragement and gave the Lily Bard mysteries another shot (thanks Tad!); Shakespeare's Champion did not fail to deliver. Harris' style is comfortable and unassuming, and she really shows her strengths as a popular fiction writer with this series. While the events of Shakespeare's Champion - like Lily's own history - are rather extraordinary, Harris doesn't try to over-sensationalize the plot, and instead lets extreme actions and events speak for themselves. Harris shows confidence in her readers by allowing them to respond in their own way, without abusing literary devices that would only function to shove specific emotional reactions down their throats. Like much of show more Harris' work, Shakespeare's Champion does not shy away from "hot topics" such as rape and racial relations; the plot of the novel itself focuses on several race-related murders and terrorist events. The book is refreshingly unapologetic, and maintains a kind of grace when dealing with the uglier side of a community.

This is not to say that Shakespeare's Champion is overly-deep; the book is still a popular novel, and is intended to entertain through a sequence of extraordinary events and personal conquests. Lily has turned out to be a very interestingly developed character, and I am looking forward to reading the next installment in the series, Shakespeare's Christmas. show less