Queen Sophie Ann and the mystery of the missing bracelet

My friend Keyse emailed to say she has been geeking out a bit ( i think waiting til the next Sookie book and for True Blood to return in May and June) and posted about Sophie Anns bracelet from BK

Read on her excellent blog :

heads rolled for this
sorry, but i am geeking out right now...but doesn't this look like Sophie-Anne Leclerq's diamond bracelet? This is what it looked like in my head - Charlaine Harris fans will understand :)
Anzie Jewelry, White Topaz Heart Bracelet, $475

http://crocodiletears-keyse.blogspot.com/2010/02/heads-rolled-for-this.html

The first thing you must know about the diamond from the bracelet must fit in side a tampon applicator tube....

These are matching bracelet given to SophieAnn by at their wedding. She gave one to Sookies's cousin Hadley and after Hadley is murdered she brings Sookie down to New Orleans under the guise of letting Sookie go through and have her cousin things but really SA wants Sookie to help find out Hadley's murderer and what became of the other bracelet.

Here is the exchange from Definitely Dead
"Did you want something of Hadley's?" I asked her, my train of thought having veered away from
money. "You know, a remembrance?"
Something flashed in her eyes, something that surprised me.
"You took the words right out of my mouth," said the queen, with an adorable hint of a French accent.
Uh-oh. It couldn't be good that she'd switched on the charm.
"I did ask Hadley to hide something for me," she said. My bullshit meter was beeping like an alarm clock. "And if you come across it in your packing, I'd like to have it back."
"What does it look like?"
"It's a jewel," she said. "My husband gave it to me as an engagement gift. I happened to leave it here before I got married."
"You're welcome to look in Hadley's jewelry box," I said immediately. "If it belongs to you, of course you have to have it back."
"That's very kind of you," she said, her face back to its regular glassy smoothness. "It's a diamond, a large diamond, and it's fixed on a platinum bracelet."
I didn't remember anything like that in Hadley's stuff, but I hadn't looked carefully. I'd planned to pack Hadley's jewelry box intact so I could pick through it at my leisure in Bon Temps.
"Please, look now," I suggested. "I know that it would be like a faux pas to lose a present from your husband."
"Oh," she said gently, "you have no idea." Sophie-Anne closed her eyes for just a second, as if she were too anxious for words. "Andre," she said, and with that word he took off for the bedroom—didn't need any directions, I noticed—and while he was gone, the queen looked oddly incomplete.

later "I'll keep an eye open for the bracelet," I said. I suspected that the value of the jewelry did not lie in its appraisal. "Would that bracelet have been left here the last night before the wedding?" I asked cautiously.
I suspected my cousin Hadley had stolen the bracelet from the queen out of sheer pique that the queen was getting married. That seemed like a Hadley thing to do. If I'd known about Hadley's concealment of the bracelet, I would have asked the witches to roll the clock back on the ectoplasmic reconstruction.
We could have watched Hadley hide the thing.
The queen gave one short nod. "I must have it back," the queen said. "You understand, it's not the value of the diamond that concerns me? You understand, a wedding between vampire rulers is not a love
match, where much can be forgiven? To lose a gift from your spouse, that's a very grave offense. And our spring ball is scheduled for two nights from now. The king expects to see me wearing his gifts. If I'm not …" Her voice trailed away, and even Andre looked almost worried.

finally ...
"How'd you get it past the search?" the queen asked. "I'm sure the searchers were checking for it."
"I had the bracelet part on under my bandage," I said. "The diamond stood out too far, though, so I had to prize it out. I put it in a tampon holder. The vampire who did the searching didn't think of pulling out
the tampon, and she didn't really know how it was supposed to look, since she hadn't had a period in centuries."
"But it was put together," the queen said.
"Oh, I went into the ladies room after I'd had my purse searched. I had a little tube of superglue in my purse, too."

Trivia : where did Sookie find that Hadley had hidden the bracelet ?

Definitely Dead Review by Fyrefly

Review: Confused readers, take heart! You are not alone! The events of Definitely Dead take place *after* the events of the short story “One Word Answer”, which can be found in the anthology Bite, or in A Touch of Dead. I’ve been reading the Sookie Stackhouse books as a bit of fun when I’m tired, distracted, or otherwise having trouble concentrating.

So, when this book assumed that I knew that Hadley was dead, and started bringing up events I didn’t remember and characters I’d never heard of, after checking several times to be sure it really was the next one in the series, I assumed that I was just being thick . Not so! It wasn’t particularly hard to follow the story even without the background information, but it would have been nice to know up-front that the reason it felt like I was missing something is because I actually was.

read on

Sookie Stackhouse book's dedications, acknowledgments and prologues for Book 6 Definitely Dead

Book 6: Definitely Dead

Obviously, this book was finished months before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. Since much of the plot is set in New Orleans, I struggled with whether I would leaveDefinitely Dead as it was, or include the catastrophe of August and September. After much thought, since Sookie's visit takes place in the early spring of the year, I decided to let the book remain as it was originally written.
My heart goes out to the people of the beautiful city of New Orleans and to all the people of the coastal areas of Mississippi, my home state. My thoughts and prayers will be with you as you rebuild your homes and your lives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to so many people: Jerrilyn Farmer's son's Latin teacher; Toni L.P. Kelner and Steve Kelner, friends and sounding boards; Ivan Van Laningham, who has both knowledge and opinions about many, many subjects; Dr. Stacy Clanton, about whom I can say the same; Alexandre Dumas, author of the fabulousThe Three Musketeers , which everyone ought to read; Anne Rice, for vampirizing New Orleans; and to the reader at Uncle Hugo's who guessed the plot of this book in advance … hats off to you all!

PROLOGUES

Dear Readers,

If you've enjoyed Sookie's adventures, you might be interested in reading other works of mine. In 2005, Berkley published Grave Sight , the first book in a series about a young woman named Harper Connelly.
Harper was struck by lightning when she was fifteen years old, and since then she's been able to find dead people. Now in her twenties, Harper and her stepbrother, Tolliver, conduct their unique business on the road.
As the two travel from job to job, they encounter all kinds of clients along the way. Sometimes, the body Harper finds has met a foul death … and sometimes, the people who pay her think Harper knows more than she does about who committed the murder.
If you think you might like reading about Harper and Tolliver,Grave Surprise , the second book about their investigations, will be on the shelves in hardcover in November of 2006. The same month,Grave Sight will be released in paperback.
I hope you enjoy the change of pace.

Charlaine Harris

True Blood and Sophie-Anne Leclerq, Queen of Louisiana

Remember the first time we see Sophie Anne is NOT in the books it's in the ALL IMPORTANT short story " One Word Answer' , in that story she comes to Sookie's house to tell her of her cousin's Hadley's death.

You can find the short story in this anthology:

One Word Answer : Bite (contains short story "One Word Answer") Jove 2005, ISBN 0-515-13970-X

Here is her description when we first meet her.

In Bite

She was beautiful, of course, but not in a fairy-tale princess sort of way. I don't know what I expected, but she wasn't it. While Bill and Bubba scrambled to their feet and then bowed deeply, I gave her a good once-over. She was wearing a very expensive midnight-blue suit and high heels. Her hair was a rich reddish brown. Of course she was pale as milk, but her eyes were large, tilted, and almost the same brown as her hair. Her fingernails were polished red, and somehow that seemed very weird. She wore no jewelry.

From Book 6 Definitely Dead

Sophie-Anne Leclerq, Queen of Louisiana, and a male vampire were sitting at a round table piled with papers. I'd met the queen once before, when she'd come to my place to tell me about my cousin's death. I hadn't noticed then how young she must have been when she died, maybe no more than fifteen. She was an elegant woman, perhaps four inches shorter than my height of five foot six, and she was groomed down to the last eyelash. Makeup, dress, hair, stockings, jewelry—the whole nine yards.

Eric makes Bill tell Sookie why he really returned to Bon Temp

Book 6

Eric folded his arms across his chest and looked down at them.
"Bill?" I said.
"Ask him why he came back to Bon Temps, Sookie," Eric said very quietly.
"Well, old Mr. Compton died, and he wanted to reclaim his …" I couldn't even describe the expression on Bill's face. My heart began to beat faster. Dread gathered in a knot in my stomach. "Bill?"
have scared me more. I might not be able to read a vampire's mind, but in this case his body language said it all. Eric was turning away because he didn't want to watch the knife sliding in.
"Sookie, you would find out when you saw the queen … Maybe I could have kept it from you, because you won't understand … but Eric has taken care of that." Bill gave Eric's back a look that could have drilled a hole through Eric's heart. "When your cousin Hadley was becoming the queen's favorite …"
And suddenly I saw it all, knew what he was going to say, and I rose up on the hospital bed with a gasp,one hand to my chest because I felt my heart shattering. But Bill's voice went on, even though I shook my head violently.
"Apparently, Hadley talked about you and your gift a lot, to impress the queen and keep her interest.
And the queen knew I was originally from Bon Temps. On some nights, I've wondered if she sent someone to kill the last Compton and hurry things along. But maybe he truly died of old age." Bill was looking down at the floor, didn't see my left hand extended to him in a "stop" motion.
"She ordered me to return to my human home, to put myself in your way, to seduce you if I had to …"
I couldn't breathe. No matter how my right hand pressed to my chest, I couldn't stop the decimation of my heart, the slide of the knife deeper into my flesh.
"She wanted your gift harnessed for her own use," he said, and he opened his mouth to say more. My eyes were so blurred with tears that I couldn't see properly, couldn't see what expression was on his face
and didn't care anyway. But I could not cry while he was anywhere near me. I would not.
"Get out," I said, with a terrible effort. Whatever else happened, I could not bear for him to see the pain he had caused.
He tried to look me straight in the eyes, but mine were too full. Whatever he wanted to convey, it was lost on me. "Please let me finish," he said.
"I never want to see you again, ever in my life," I whispered. "Ever."
He didn't speak. His lips moved, as if he were trying to form a word or phrase, but I shook my head.
"Get out," I told him, in a voice so choked with hatred and anguish that it didn't sound like my own. Bill turned and walked past the curtain and out of the emergency room. Eric did not turn around to see my face, thank God. He reached back to pat me on the leg before he left, too.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill someone with my bare hands.
I had to be by myself. I could not let anyone see me suffer this much. The pain was tied up with a rage
so profound that I had never felt its like. I was sick with anger and hurt.

Later page 179 "You have to let me say this, just once," he said. "I loved you. I love you."
I raised a hand to protest, and he said, "No, let me finish. She sent me there, true. But when I met you—after I came to know you—I really … loved you."
How long after he'd taken me to bed had this supposed love come about? How could I possibly believe him, since he'd lied so convincingly from the very moment I'd met him—playing disinterested because he could read my fascination with the first vampire I'd ever met?
"I risked my life for you," I said, the words coming out in a halting sequence. "I gave Eric power over me forever, for your sake, when I took his blood. I killed someone for you. This is not something I take for granted, even if you do … even if that's everyday existence for you. It's not, for me. I don't know if I can
ever not hate you."
I got up, slowly and painfully, and to my relief he didn't make the mistake of trying to help me. "You probably saved my life tonight," I said, looking down at him. "And I thank you for that. But don't come into Merlotte's any more, don't hang around in my woods, and don't do anything else for me. I don't want to see you again."
"I love you," he said stubbornly, as if that fact were so amazing and such an undeniable truth that I should believe him. Well, I had, and look at where it had gotten me.
"Those words are not a magical formula," I said. "They're not going to open my heart to you."
Bill was over a hundred and thirty years old, but at that moment I felt I could match him. I dragged myself inside, shut the door behind me and locked it, and made myself go down the hall to the bedroom.