Bloody Bones (Vampire Hunter)

In some of Laurell Hamiltons excellent supernatural thrillers about Anita Blake, the Vampire Executioner, we forget that Anita raises the dead for a living, and that her involvements with the undead, the temporarily furry and the St Louis Police Department are only a sideline. InBloody Bones, she is hired to raise the victims of some long-ago mass slaughter, a pile of dismembered arms and legs and skulls and ribs, and identify them. Her employers want to build a luxury hotel on ground claimed by the Bouvier clan as an old burial ground–and the Bouviers are not entirely human… Add to the mix murders too brutal to be obviously vampiric, a feud between Anitas vampire date Jean-Claude and the older vampire who rules the neighbouring countryside–and we have the sort of complicated mess of intrigue which Hamilton always handles so well. Anita is an interesting character because so torn between what she is, a necromancer with the power to compel the dead, and a person far too accomplished at violence, and her religious beliefs, as well as between her attraction to Jean-Claude and her love for the werewolf Richard. She is a fascinating series character because she changes so much.–Roz Kaveney