The Laughing Corpse – Hamilton, Laurell K.

Ace, Copyright 1994, printed 1996, 293 pages

ISBN 0-441-00091-6

Read March 2013, at age 34

First time read

What it is:

Book #2 of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter.  The vampires have been sorted out, and now there’s a new killer on the loose.  It’s a long series, and as these things go, start from the beginning.

From the back cover:

The older the zombie, the bigger the death needed to raise it. 

After a few centuries, the only death “big enough” is a human sacrifice.  I know, because I’m an animator.  My name is Anita Blake.

Working for Animators, Inc., is just a job – like selling insurance.  But all the money in the world wasn’t enough for me to take on the particular job Harold Gaynor was offering. 

Somebody else did, though – a rogue animator.  Now he’s not just raising the dead… he’s raising Hell.  And it’s up to me to stop it…

No spoilers in my brief reactions:

Overall:

This was pretty much my equivalent of a trashy romance.  It was an easy, fun read.  Not bad, but not particularly good, either.  There sure seems to be a lot of supernatural happenings for essentially 80’s life to go on as normal.  Otherwise, a nice police procedural/mystery with lots of action and a bit of a frenetic pace.  It was good for an airplane ride.

Zombies are becoming much more popular in books and movies in the last while, and they're the star of the show this time, but this didn’t feel as overdone as the vampires in the previous book did.  The writing was smoother, and the plot less stretched, as well.  It really was a pretty decent book, for a popcorn book- there just wasn’t much depth. 

Rating:  3