Vicious Vampyres: Guilty Pleasures

So.... I want to start at the beginning of another series that I have deep affection for and want to share with you, out there in the dark. (Yes, a little too much Norma Desmond in my life....what can you do).

It was the pictures that got small, dammit!

I digress....

So this series is one of my favorites and is definitely in the 101 of my literary cannon.  We meet Anita Blake, Animator and Vampire Hunter.  She is a small woman based out of St. Louis, MO.  In her world, vampires have come out of the coffin and weres have left the kennel and the world knows that they all exist.  While Vampires are considered legal citizens, weres have a more difficult time, especially in the Western States where varmint laws are still on the books.

Anita is an animator - that is, she raises the dead.  Using her natural affinity for death, she is able to raise corpses to testify at court cases, get knowledge from their lives and generally be a way to safeguard against the misuse of their estates and wills.  She is living her very black and white life until she is made to go with her best friend Catherine on her bachelorette party to one of the vampire owned bars in the edges of St. Louis, Guilty Pleasures.  There she meet Jean-Claude the sexy vampire owner of Guilty Pleasures.  A trap is sprung.

From there, a vampire she knows, the manager of Guilty Pleasures, Jean-Claude involves her in the caper affecting the vamp community.  Someone is killing vampires and the police are not getting to a solution;  who better to ask for help than the local vampire hunter?

This is the beginning of Anita's descent into the world of the supernatural, leaving her to decide what makes her human and what makes them monster.  I have to say that her journey through the series looking into both herself and past and her growing awareness of what makes someone a monster is a telling quandary for me. 

Indeed, in modern life, we far too often see people labeled monsters and far too many as good that perhaps upon greater reflection would be opposite.

Listen here, dear readers:  I can emphatically tell you that this series is most welcome addition to any one's book list.  While I happen to like the former designs of the book cover than the one below, it's the words that matter, not the cover.

Talk soon,
RHW

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter)
By: Laurell K. Hamilton
Published: August 3, 2004, Berkeley Trade
ISBN:978-0425197547