Harris, Charlaine. Dead Until Dark: A Southern Vampire Mystery

This paperback mystery was a real pleasure. Harris, known for her Aurora Teagarden/Shakespeare mysteries weaves a delightful tale of mystery and fantasy. She brings her intimate knowledge of the south to this story as she does in her other mysteries.

I love vampire trash like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series (Click here for a review.) and this, in some ways, is even better. This mystery had less graphic violence and left much more to the imagination. The characters are well-drawn, especially the female protagonist Sookie Stackhouse and her love-interest, the vampire Bill. The difficult part of any fantasy writer's mission is to build the world that her characters inhabit in a way that rings true. Harris uses her knowledge of Southern small-town life and augments her imagined elements by anchoring them in reality. You have met people that hang out at the bar, Merlotte's, and you have witnessed or experienced relationships like the one Sookie has with her womanizing brother Jason and her really cool grandmother.

The supernatural elements unravel for the reader just as Sookie discovers them herself. Whatever she learns about Bill and his cohorts, and the other secrets in this backroads Louisiana town come to the reader at the same time. Sookie has a disabilty, she can read minds. The specifics of this talent also come out as Sookie learns to trust Bill and discovers her own bounderies and abilities.

Her relationship to Bill is full of excellent sexual tension and sharply-spliced conflict. Other characters in the book hint at possible plot entanglements in other books to come. Like Hamilton's vampire series, there are other men who are interested in Sookie and have their own complications in their lives. Like Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, Sookie is proud and hilarious, as well as brave and loyal. Her running comments as she listens to other people's "noise" will remind you Plum lovers of Stephanie's droll and witty comments, as well as Anita Blake's acerbic internal commentaries.

The second in the series, Living Dead in Dallas (2002) is as good if not even more layered and intriguing.

Leane M. Ellis, May 14, 2001, revised 4/17/02.