Halloween is the perfect time of year for armchair adventurers to explore the fictional worlds of fantasy and horror that pulsate just under the surface of more socially acceptable book club fare like ripe throbbing arteries awaiting a vampire’s attentions.
Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series is the place to start for those uninitiated in urban-fantasy, erotic vampire-private detective division.
The nearly seven million copies of Laurell’s 27 Anita Blake novels and novellas attest to the demand for her unique stories combining vampire and P.I. genres.
If comic books are more your style, try her Anita Blake series from Marvel Comics…
Never one to shirk from stepping off into uncharted storytelling territories, the author risked and provoked the wrath of a sizable fraction of her readership when her heroine became infected with “ardeur,” a virus peculiar to vampires, which drives her to have sex several times a day with different partners, sometimes in groups. Anita Blake’s deep dive into the realm of supernatural erotica turned off many original fans but attracted as many new ones.
If Laurell’s storytelling dazzles you, but unsolicited blood transfusions are too much for your sensitivities, you might want to try her other wildly popular Merry Gentry series, in which the titular heroine is a faerie, a Princess of Faerie in fact, rather than an ardeur-ish vampire, but she’s also a private investigator (more fantasy/P.I. than horror/P.I.).
She pursues truth and justice while being equally belabored by assassination attempts and personal workaday anguishes of the head and the heart.
For a genuine Halloween treat, be sure to tap the vein of the urban-fantasy, beginning with the genre’s shining star and originator, Laurell K. Hamilton.