Could vampires be lurking in our neck of the woods?
In Charlaine Harris' latest novel "Living Dead in Dallas" (Ace), the place is absolutely overrun with them.
Since synthetic blood was introduced, vampires no longer have to feed on humans. Now, they've gone public, and not everyone is happy when these creatures of legend come to life.
Sookie Stackhouse works at a bar in the fictional town of Bon Temps - which based on geographical clues, I guess is somewhere near Ruston. She's also a psychic with a vampire for a boyfriend, which puts her in a precarious position. When the vampire council in Shreveport calls her to duty, she has to answer.
This time, a nest in Dallas is missing a member, and a radical anti-vampire religious group is suspected of kidnapping him. Sookie's psychic abilities have been loaned to the group to help track down their brother.
To make matters more complicated, the murder of a friend back home also remains unsolved - and Sookie is about to find out firsthand about one of Bon Temps' dark secrets.
Harris is a prolific mystery writer, but "Living Dead in Dallas" is only her second foray into vampire fiction. The first, "Dead Until Dark," was also set in Bon Temps. If Harris wants to take this direction in the future, she's off to a promising start.
The most impressive thing about this novel is the detail. Though she lives in Arkansas, Harris will make you believe she lives here. She's very familiar with the culture of northern Louisiana, and it shows. From the erratic weather patterns to the area's obsession with high school football, Harris makes Bon Temps feel like a very real place, somewhere you could pass through on a Sunday drive.
The book is littered with recognizable things from the real world. For example, the Monroe Symphony may or may not be happy to know that Sookie's vampire boyfriend Bill attends their concerts.
Aside from that, though, "Living Dead in Dallas" is also an entertaining read. The book is fast-paced, and the story line is intriguing.
Harris has given her readers a lively romp through a fantasy land that's grounded in the real world, a world readers in this area will know well. Think Laurell K. Hamilton with a Southern accent.
A lot of folks might roll their eyes at the mention of a vampire story, but when it happens in your own back yard, it's a different matter. In "Club Dead" ($6.50, Ace Books), Charlaine Harris returns to the fictional northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps and her heroine Sookie Stackhouse.
This time, Sookie's vampire boyfriend Bill Compton disappears while on a secret mission from the vampire queen of Louisiana, who has sent him to treat with the Mississippi faction. The Louisiana vampires can't risk a war with Mississippi by moving openly to find him, so that leaves it up to Sookie and her guide, a suave werewolf named Alcide Herveaux.
But Sookie isn't sure she really wants to find Bill. She's discovered that at least part of the reason he went to Jackson was to meet a former lover, another vampire. In fact, Sookie's not entirely sure that Bill even wants to be found.
Before you roll your eyes at the plotline, know that this isn't your typical vampire novel. If you're imagining a redneck Lestat, think again. Harris' vampires are rougher and less refined than Rice's, and these books don't take themselves too seriously. Unlike many vampire novels with dark, gothic moods, these books are intended to be fun - and they are. Quite a lot of fun, in fact.
While the town of Bon Temps is fictional, there are plenty of local landmarks for readers to associate with. During the course of the stories, action happens in Shreveport, Jackson, Ruston and even right here in Monroe.
Harris, who lives in Magnolia, Ark., is also able to capture the character of our area pretty well. While I did groan at a few stereotypical characterizations, I also had to admit that for the most part, she gets it right.
As an added bonus in "Club Dead," Harris offers a possible explanation for quite a few tabloid stories in the character of Bubba. I won't reveal the secret. I'll leave that to the reader to find out, but it's an original idea that had me rolling with laughter.
"Club Dead" is the third in Harris' "Southern Vampire" series, and it's just as lively and entertaining as the first two. They're part horror and part mystery with a healthy dose of biting (pardon the pun) humor.
If you're looking for darkened corners, melodramatic images and dialogue and "proper" vampires, I'd suggest you find them somewhere else. If you're looking for a fun supernatural romp across a Southern landscape, you won't do much better than Harris' books.
After a rough year, Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress in the small town of Bon Temps, just wants to rest. In the past year, she's hooked up and broken up with a vampire boyfriend, her brother has been accused of murder, she's been sent to Dallas to investigate a vampire kidnapped by a group of humans and she's had to rescue her vampire boyfriend from torture at the hands of his maker.
As the new year turns, she resolves not to get beaten up. Now, only a couple of days into the new year, she's about to break that resolution - big time.
"Dead to the World" ($19.95, Ace) is Charlaine Harris' fourth book about the supernatural community of Bon Temps, a fictional small town somewhere between Monroe and Shreveport, and it's about time she got a hardcover title.
The latest installment brings back a lot of familiar characters: telepathic Sookie, her shapeshifter boss who turns into a collie, her ne'er-do-well brother Jason, her vampire ex-boyfriend Bill, werewolf Alcide Hervaux and the vampires of the Shreveport bar Fangtasia. She also introduces new characters, including a strange group of folks from an outlying area named Hotshot.
The adventures begin when Eric, the sheriff of the local vampire community, shows up on Sookie's drive home with a serious case of amnesia. When she calls the other Shreveport vamps, she somehow ends up as his protector.
Meanwhile, her brother goes missing, leaving only a blood stain and a strange print on his pier. Then there's the coven of shape-shifting, vampire blood-addicted witches that seem to be moving in on the vampires' territory, and their leader has a vendetta against Shreveport's supernatural community.
As with the other three books in the series, "Dead to the World" is great fun. It's light and fast-paced - no long, woe-is-me philosophical passages for Harris' vampires, just action from start to finish.
Harris strikes a style that's much more fun than Anne Rice and less sexually charged than Laurell K. Hamilton. She tells the story with a down-home flavor that's not often found in the horror or fantasy sections of the bookstore.
