Club Dead By Charlaine Harris - Book Review

This is yet another great book from Charlaine Harris, the third installment in the Southern Vampire Mysteries series. As soon as I got it I knew I wouldn’t be able to put the book down.

As expected, the book follows Sookie Stackhouse, the telepathic waitress from Bon Temps through another set of adventures filled with tension, mystery, and a healthy dose of supernatural. After the mishaps from the previous books, the romance gets pushed to the back burner. Vampire Bill seems less interested in Sookie and spends most of his time in secrecy, writing something on his computer, then disappears.

“The sweetest part of being a couple is sharing your life with someone else.

But my life, evidently, had not been good enough to share.”

To make matter worse, a man shows up at the bar she works and tries to kill Sookie. The plot thickens when she finds out that Bill was kidnapped by the Mississippi vampires and it’s all related to his mysterious computer files.

Another of my favorite quotes happens when Eric stops by to inform Sookie that Bill was kidnapped and sneaks into her bed while she sleeps:

“My eyes flew open, and I pushed back against rock-hard shoulders. I let out a little squeak of horror.

“It’s me,” said a familiar voice.

“Eric, what are you doing here?”

“Snuggling.”

The only predictable action in this book is that Sookie goes to Jackson, Mississippi to investigate. After reading the first two books, I wouldn’t have expected it to go any other way. Of course, she’s going to put herself at risk trying to save her first love, despite learning he was planning to leave her for an old flame. Her adventures in Jackson take her to Club Dead, a nightclub where vampires and shapeshifters hang out together. To top it off, it’s a full moon, so violence ensues!

The story is well-plotted with unexpected twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat while reading. Sookie is in great form and only seems to grow stronger as a character while going through these supernatural adventures.

Although her romance with Bill cools off, the story introduces Alcide Herveaux, a new supporting character that might become a love interest later on. The way he’s portrayed in the book, Alcide seems like a good candidate to replace Bill. He’s easy on the eyes, a good man, and a werewolf. But in order to be likable, he has to be flawed and he is. He’s doing daytime jobs for vampires to pay his father’s debt and has a psychotic ex-girlfriend. How could you not root for him?! In this book, we find more about the shapeshifters and the werewolves, mostly due to Alcide who fills in a lot of the blanks in Sookie’s knowledge of the supernatural world. Unlike vampires, the rest of the supes have not revealed themselves to humanity. The weres and the shifters are well organized and have their own structured society.

Above mystery and adventure, Mrs. Harris adds humor to all her books. How could you read this with a straight face:

“They found the corpse in the closet of Alcide’s apartment, and they hatched a plan to hide his remains.” Eric sounded like that had been kind of cute of us.

“My Sookie hid a corpse?”

“I don’t think you can be too sure about that possessive pronoun.”

“Where did you learn that term, Northman?”

“I took ‘English as a Second Language’ at a community college in the seventies.”

At times, the characters say unexpected things that shock you. And by characters, I mean Eric, the powerful vampire who likes to get a reaction from Sookie any way he can:

“I have always been very fond of you.” He’d always wanted to have sex with me. “Plus, I want to fuck you.”

The book doesn’t rely on obscenities and crude language to shock the reader. Perhaps that’s why when it happens, it’s unforgettable and sure to make you blush.