Shakespeare's Landlord

Lily Bard Mysteries, Book 1

By: Charlaine Harris

Narrated by: Julia Gibson

Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

From the Anthony Award-winning author of the immensely popular Sookie Stackhouse mysteries comes the first book starring Lily Bard, a reclusive cleaning lady with a penchant for karate. When Lily finds and reports a dead body, her shady past and connections to potential perpetrators make her a leading suspect.

©1996 Charlaine Harris (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"While on a late-night job in tiny Shakespeare, Ark., Lily Bard, 31, sees a furtive figure placing large plastic garbage bags in the local park and, untying one, discovers the body of her former landlord. In a quick but anonymous phone call (she is determined to avoid any questioning), she reports it to the police chief. With skill and wry wit, Harris, the author of the Aurora Teagarden series, soon reveals the horrific facts in Lily's background that explain why she is solitary, confrontational, obsessed with self-defense - and why she chooses, despite a first-rate education, to eke out a living as a cleaning woman....Harris's finely tuned, colorful and suspenseful tale, filled with vigorous and unique characters, will leave readers hoping it's the start of a series." ( Publishers Weekly)
"[Lily Bard is] the equal of Kay Scarpetta." ( Library Journal)

Very good book

What did you love best about Shakespeare's Landlord?

The Pace of this book was great. Kept me interested during my daily commutes and while walking.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Lily was the main character and my favorite. She isn't perfect and don't know that I'd want to spend time with her in reality, but she is a great leading lady.

Which scene was your favorite?

Any scene where Lilly was cleaning the houses of Shakespeare's well to do families.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, too much to digest at once. Great to come back to again and again though.

Great story, but downloaded book has technical pro

Really loved the characters, and had a difficult time putting it down. However, the audiobook has a tendency to stop frequently because of technical errors... very annoying

Harris has created another strong and compelling lead character in Lily Bard

This is a great story and performance. I enjoyed getting to know Lily Bard, who worked hard to emerge strong despite her past. The story kept me engaged and all loose ends were tied up at the end. I look forward to enjoying the other books in this series.

Fun, easy with warm, rich characters

I have all the Shakespeare's books. I have listen to them twice. I find Lilly to be very motivational

Loved Lily Bard's strength in this dark novel

It turns out that you can no more judge a book by its title than by its cover.

I'd been put off reading the Lily Bard books because the combination of Lily Bard and the word "Shakespeare" in the title of each novel reminded me of the twee and sugar-coated Aurora Teagarden books, which I had not enjoyed.

I'm glad I overcame my prejudices and listened to the first Lily Bard novel.

There is nothing sugar-coated here. Lily Bard is a survivor. Her old life has been stolen from her. She regards her current life as successful if she gets through each day quietly, without attracting any attention.

Lily is strong, focused, observant but tight-lipped. She earns her living cleaning houses in the small town of Shakespeare. She comes alive when she is practising Karate. partly because of the joy of doing something so demanding well and partly because it stands between her and any future threat to make her a victim.

Her life changes when, walking off her insomnia in the middle of the night, she notices somebody using her garbage can cart to dump a body. Despite her best efforts to protect the anonymous life she's built, events and her own strong will, pull Lily deeper into solving the murder, even at the cost of revealing her own past.

The plot of "Shakespeare's Landlord" works as a conventional "whodunnit" mystery. Two things raise the book well above the average for this genre. The fist is that Lily Bard is a wonderful creation: strong but vulnerable, proud but wanting to stay in the background, curious but discrete, and afraid but brave. She seemed real to me. A woman to be admired, whether there is a mystery to solve or not. The second is Charlaine Harris' prose: she does not waste a word, does not indulge in extravagant descriptions, but the result is still a rich evocation of people and the town they live in.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

Such a "real" book

I love the Lily Bard books. I was surprised when I found them inspirational.
Lily's life was basically destroyed at a young age and she had to struggle to get past her trauma and build a new one away from her family and old friends. Finding that her late night walk leads to the discovery of a dead body, and catapults Lilly into people's attention again, disrupts the quiet existence she had been striving so hard for.
I loved that Ms Harris brought Lilly into a scene in one of her Sookie Stackhouse novels, too.
The narrator did an excellent job with Lilly's dry humor, and her "voice" was perfect!
I highly recommend these books ... I usually listen to them at least one or two times per year. They never get old!

If your looking for Sookie leave this series alone

Lilly is a woman with a traumatized past who overcame much, and is just trying to learn to live with her demons. She is intelligent, and a fighter, not wanting to ever be at the mercy of any one again. I'm up to the 5th book in the series. Lilly Bard is a difficult character, and not a charming or sweet thing, she is tough and doesn't take things for granted. I thing Charlaine Harris is an amazing writer and can create interesting characters. I'm really enjoying this series, sorry it will end with book five, but who knows maybe Ms Harris will decide to continue. I like very much.

Interesting mystery

This was a fairly good mystery. Lily, has reason to live with great care, working as a cleaning woman, taking self-defense classes and trying to quietly remake her life after a harrowing ordeal in her past. Her quiet life is suddenly changed when she witnesses what she quickly realizes was someone moving a dead body. From there, she feels she must find the murderer alone, rather than risk having to reveal all the reasons she keeps to herself. There are many candidates for the murderer, and despite herself, Lily not only proves to be good at detecting, but begins to get a bit closer to a few people. Although the police chief does not initially care for her acting on her own, by the end of the book, he has a newfound respect for her courage and assistance.

In the first five minutes of this book, the author chose to use a demeaning racial comment, that serves no purpose to the rest of the story. There could have been any number of other similes she could have chosen, and it was hard not to wonder why it had been stuck in there at all. This left some distaste in my mind for the remainder of the book. However, with that qualification, I have to admit that the series most likely will be entertaining in future episodes. It's not great, but it was entertaining.

Good, straight-forward mystery

This is the first of Charlaine Harris' "Shakespeare" series and, I believe, one of her earliest mysteries. There are none of the supernatural/paranormal elements that you might expect from her better known, more recent, work.

The Shakespeare series is set in a small Southern town and features a young, single "woman with a past" as the main character. Lily Bard moved to Shakespeare after surviving a horrific rape & assault. She started working as a house cleaner and began studying martial arts. Her work as a cleaning lady gives her an interesting perspective on other residents of the town, and her study of martial arts gives her a feeling of being able to control herself and deal with the unexpected. Up until now she has stayed below the radar, but when she unexpectedly finds a dead body she begins to come out of her self-imposed isolation and get a bit more involved.

I enjoy this series, and recommend reading it in publication order so that you can best appreciate the way the characters grow & develop.

The narrator does a good job - just a hint of "Southern" and just enough differentiation between characters so that you can keep track of who is speaking more easily.

Great start to a great series

Have read this series many, many times. Easy read and entertaining while briefly touching on a serious subject. Well done.