The Barnes & Noble Review
Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire saga (begun with Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas) chronicles the life and times of Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in love with a vampire named Bill Compton. Sookie is attracted to Bill not just because he's physically appealing and practically immortal but also because she can't read his mind. The glamour and mystery surrounding the tall, pale, and handsome vampire -- as well as his supernatural bloodsucking friends -- draws Sookie in to wild, otherworldly romance, as well as incomprehensible danger.
In Club Dead, Bill informs Sookie that he has to go somewhere on a top-secret mission for the queen of Louisiana (vampires have a strict territorial hierarchy) and promptly disappears. Later, Sookie is informed by Eric, the charismatic head of the local vampire territory, that someone has kidnapped Bill in Mississippi and that his life may be in grave danger. Sookie also learns that her undead boyfriend was actually summoned by one of his ex-girlfriends, a vicious vampire named Lorena, who was hired to seduce, abduct, and torture Bill to obtain his top-secret information. Eric believes that Russell Edgington, the powerful king of Mississippi, has Bill somewhere on his sprawling compound. Sookie decides to do anything to rescue him.
Like Laurell K. Hamilton's popular vampire hunter, Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse is a strong, intelligent, very sexy woman with a great sense of humor and a strange knack for getting emotionally involved with the undead. Club Dead is an action-packed page-turner of a fantastical mystery comparable to Hamilton's saga. Paul Goat Allen
