REVIEW: ‘Living Dead in Dallas’ by Charlaine Harris

Liv­ing Dead in Dal­las by Char­laine Har­ris, copy­right 2002, pub­lished by Ace, is the sec­ond book in her pop­u­lar South­ern Vam­pire series. It is avail­able in paper­back and in dig­i­tal for­mat of your choice. I might pos­si­bly be the last per­son on earth to not have read these books but I plan to rec­tify that.

The story cen­ters around 26 year-old bar­maid, Sookie Stack­house, from Bön Temps, Louisiana. Sookie’s life changes dra­mat­i­cally since she became roman­ti­cally involved with Bill Comp­ton, a vam­pire sev­eral cen­turies older. The changes aren’t all for the bet­ter. Her new vam­pire boyfriend comes with many entan­gle­ments and com­pli­ca­tions that comes with con­sort­ing with well, vampires.

I find the Sookie Stack­house series so far very enter­tain­ing. Who can resist revis­it­ing a world where urban leg­ends are brought vividly to life? You have were­wolves, shape shifters, vam­pires and in this entry, we are intro­duced to the mae­nad named Cal­listo, a beau­ti­ful woman, who cur­rently makes her home in the woods of north­ern Louisiana.

Accord­ing to mythol­ogy, the mae­nad is described as a “rav­ing woman, a wor­ship­per of Diony­sus, Greek god of wine and drunk­en­ness.” They make their home in the woods but very few of them are still around. Sookie and Bill inad­ver­tently encounter the mae­nad on the way to a meet­ing in Shreve­port with Eric. The mae­nad is upset at her recent trib­ute from the vam­pires and sends Sookie as her “mes­sen­ger” of dis­sent. That’s basi­cally the first cou­ple of chap­ters of the story and then that thread is tem­porar­ily dropped. Soon after recov­er­ing from that inci­dent (her back was scraped raw), Sookie and Bill learn that they’ve been loaned out to assist the Dal­las vam­pires in their hour of need.

Sookie and Bill hop on a plane to Dal­las to help find a miss­ing vam­pire and return him to the nest. Sookie’s detec­tive skills leads her to a fanat­i­cal group called The Fel­low­ship of the Sun. It’s a reli­gious sect ded­i­cated to the destruc­tion of vam­pires and those who asso­ciate with them like the fang bangers and wanna be vam­pire groupies. They orga­nize rit­u­als that cel­e­brate the death of vam­pires who want to “meet the dawn” or com­mit vam­pire sui­cide. Some vam­pires go will­ingly, some don’t. Far­rell was kid­napped and the Dal­las nest was betrayed by an outsider.

When Sookie dis­guises her looks to gain entry into the Fel­low­ship, she falls into a trap and ends up find­ing help from a ancient vam­pire named God­frey, who is described as look­ing like a teen-age kid with a body full of ancient tat­toos. God­frey is a ser­ial killer who has decided he wants to end his life. It’s a grip­ping yet brief sto­ry­line. On Sookie’s hasty exit from the Fel­low­ship of the Sun, she luck­ily gets help from Luna, a “feisty” His­panic woman who is apart of a secret soci­ety of super­nat­ural beings who want to remain hid­den from the world. Sookie real­izes that her boss and friend, Sam (who changes into a Col­lie at full moon), is not alone.

The sec­ond part of the story arc bounces back to Louisiana and involves the death of a cook named Lafayette, who worked for Merlotte’s and was a friend to Sookie. Lafayette was a nice, friendly black man who was known in the com­mu­nity as being gay. Lafayette report­edly gos­siped about a secret sex party that may have some­thing to do with his untimely death. Lafayette’s mur­der proves prob­lem­atic to solve since his body ended up in Andy Bellefleur’s car. Andy’s the local police­man of Bön Temps whose fam­ily tree is pretty well known in this small Louisiana town. His sis­ter, Por­tia, is a lawyer, who finds vam­pires less than dis­taste­ful. She reluc­tantly reaches out to Bill to help her dis­cover who framed her brother. How­ever, it’s Sookie who is moved to action since Lafayette was a friend and it’s no sur­prise that she man­ages to solve this one with a lit­tle help from a cer­tain rav­ing mad woman, look­ing for tribute.

There are cer­tain ele­ments in this series that seem to repeat or cre­ate a pat­tern, for exam­ple, Sookie and Bill fight­ing over his lack of human­ity. Bill lost his indul­gence in humankind a long time ago. That’s some­thing that Sookie will either have to accept or don’t but they do try to find com­pro­mise when­ever their rela­tion­ship hits a bump. How­ever, it’s those “bumps” in the road that make things inter­est­ing in their rela­tion­ship and promises to keep read­ers guess­ing. Sec­ondly, since Sookie’s “gift” is more con­trol­lable and she’s learned how to use it to help oth­ers, she will always be sought out, owing debts and fac­ing even more dan­gers in a super­nat­ural world that boasts many chal­lenges for mere mor­tals. Then there’s Eric, the charm­ing mas­ter vam­pire from Shreve­port with the Viking good looks, who con­tin­ues to tempt Sookie from her vam­pire boyfriend, so far with no success.

I do so enjoy the polit­i­cal land­scape and the moral con­flicts of this world that Har­ris has cre­ated. Vam­pires are always at the receiv­ing end of hate and big­otry. There are no laws to pro­tect vam­pires from humans should they decide that the world can do with­out a few of the undead. There are orga­ni­za­tions and hate groups devoted to their destruc­tion. Vam­pires are the unpop­u­lar minor­ity of the moment, since being pub­licly outed two years ago. Many vam­pires try to main­stream it with humans while many oth­ers stick with their kind for safety.

I love the idea of dis­cov­er­ing other myth­i­cal and super­nat­ural crea­tures who are still hid­ing from mankind. North­ern Louisiana hasn’t been the same for Sookie now that she’s firmly entrenched in this fas­ci­nat­ing yet dan­ger­ous “new” world. My grade, B+, because the start of the novel was grip­ping but once the sto­ry­line shifted to Dal­las, the plot see­sawed back and forth in momen­tum but the pac­ing picked back up again when Sookie returned to Louisiana and man­aged to keep me enthralled until the end. Note: I am try­ing my best to read all of these books before the May release of From Dead to Worse.