Club Dead, by Charlaine Harris

Book 33

I spent the last day of my vacation reading Club Dead, by Charlaine Harris - the third Sookie Stackhouse book.  The one where we are introduced to the werewolves.

Ugh.

In the eternal struggle between vampires and werewolves, I am clearly on the side of the vampires. 

The book opens with Bill being distracted and lame and going on a "business trip" and then disappearing.  What Eric was not going to tell her - but Pam made him spill - was that Bill was getting ready to drop her for Lorena.  I am rather liking Pam these days.  Eric has a vested interest in finding Bill, so he talks Sookie into going to Mississippi with a werewolf that he knows to find out where Bill might be.

The werewolf turns out to be a hottie and a rather nice guy that happens to have some baggage of his own.  We learn a bit about the wereworld and its relationship to the vampire world and that of the shape shifters.  Blahblahblah.  Lorena turns out to be working for the King of Mississippi, who is holding and turturing Bill into giving up a database of information that he has been compiling.

The most amusing thing about this book is a minor character named "Bubba".  Dim bulb of a vampire that has been set up as Sookie's bodyguard a couple of times in the series.  He takes orders literally and does not do any lateral thinking at all.  What I somehow missed before is that Bubba is actually Elvis Presley.  For serious.  In this world, a vmapire was in the ER when Elvis came in and turned him.  Except that Elvis' brain was already fried, so now he is a rather pathetic creature, who barely understands that he was once the King.

Anyway.  I was disappointed to see Eric get even more googly-eyed over Sookie, but I guess I'd better get over it.  It keeps him on the canvas, anyway.  I appreciated that Sookie kicked a bit of ass, and that at the end she sent the little boys out of her house and back to the playground.

As far as the link to the series - obviously Bill disappeared at the end of Season 2, but the rest of the set up doesn't quite add together.  So I am interested to see how HBO pulls the story arc in line.  Or doesn't.