Laurell K. Hamilton - Guilty pleasures

Anita Blake, a former vampire hunter who now works as an animator, can raises the dead. Where she lives vampires live openly among humans and some of them have strange habits. Since killing vampire is against the law without a warrant, Anita works closely with the police squad supernatural who takes extreme cases.

Now someone or somewhat is killing vampires and although the police squad is investigating it, the two most powerful vampires in the city, Nicolaos and Jean-Claude are asking Anita to locate the killer. Anita knows she is no match to fight them because Nicolaos is a thousand year old sadistic vampire trapped in her young girls body and Jean-Claude is one of the modern vamps, gorgeous with manners and style, but so deadly.

Anita’s style to find and even kill the assassin doesn’t please the vampires and Nicolaos wants Anita dead when the job is done. But Jean-Claude cannot let that happen and does everything in his power to keep Anita save from Nicolaos attacks, even if this means they have to kill their queen.

Guilty pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton is the first novel in her Anita Blake series and I didn’t know what to expect of it. This book was highly recommended by some friends of mine, who knew my love for vamps and werewolves. So I bought the book, started reading and to my surprise I was hooked.

Anita Blake is a strong woman; she is a professional animator who raises the dead. She is good at her job, that is why clients specifically as for her to do the though jobs. Besides that she is a licensed vampire killer, the executioner. So she is a little worried when the most powerful vampire in town asks her to do a job for her. Anita knows she has to watch her back, because she doesn’t trust vampires, especially Nicolaos. But she gets help from Jean-Claude, the gorgeous vampire in town who finds Anita very pleasant and attractive and will protect her against Nicolaos. But will that be enough?

Beside Jean-Claude we meet several of Anita’s friends. Edward is a bounty hunter who is persuading Anita to give him the daytime location of the head-vampire to destroy her once and for all. Veronica is a private investigator and close friend of Anita’s, who provide Anita with all the information she needs.

I’m glad to see this novel is the first in a long series, because I’m curious to see what will happen to Anita and her job.