Book Review
Title: The Laughing Corpse (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Book 2) by Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: Paranormal, Romance
Rating: 4 Stars
After reading Guilty Pleasures and loving it I couldn’t wait to get into The Laughing Corpse especially after reading the short stories in Strange Candy. When we re-join Anita it is with her boss as they are going to see a potential client, Harold Gaynor. Harold is obvious a very rich man and wants Anita to raise and almost 300 year old zombie and Anita refuses because it would require a human sacrifice. The weirdest thing about this encounter is the girl, Cicely who Harold claims is deaf but there is definitely something odd about her. After going to a dress fitting for Catherine’s wedding, Anita gets called to a murder scene where the bodies have been mutilated and there is small boy missing. Anita knows the murderer is probably undead since there is no blood around the broken glass door where they entered from but the only thing strong enough to cause the damage is a flesh eating zombie but she only knows one person strong enough to raise a zombie like this besides herself. Dominga Salvador is a voodoo priest and Anita knows she won’t talk to the police but she will talk to Anita. Anita has avoided Dominga’s previous attempts at communication and she can’t allow the police to speak to her because Dominga will know Anita is responsible and she doesn’t want to be on the wrong side of this woman.
Anita eventually gets a meeting set up with Dominga thanks to Manny as he is a former vaudan and Dominga’s former lover. The meeting with Dominga really sets her up to be the main antagonist despite Harold Gaynor being present. Upon arriving she immediately begins testing Anita’s magical ability and we learn through Anita that there is a history of vaudan practisers in her family but after her mother’s death, her grandmother tested her and found her affinity for the dead and actively encouraged her father to cut off contact with her mother’s side of the family for Anita’s sake. Dominga doesn’t give much away in this testing other than she didn’t raise whatever is killing people but she offers Anita more information in exchange for one more test and despite Manny’s protests she agrees. Dominga takes her down into the basement and presents her with two women, the one is obviously a zombie and Anita senses the other woman is also a zombie but there is something off about them. Anita soon realises that they still have their souls which isn’t common practice for zombie raising and Dominga explains that she captures the soul when the person dies, raises the body and then rebinds the soul to the body making them completely aware of what they are. Anita realises that these zombies don’t rot unless the soul is removed and Dominga uses this as a form of punishment to make the zombies afraid of her. She also learns that Dominga is going to sell both of the girls to sex slavery and feels immediately sorry for them but there isn’t anything she can do right now. Before she leaves she essentially threatens Dominga and tells her she is going to stop her and Dominga responds by promising to send something to Anita soon.
After leaving Anita attends the funeral of a colleague and meets John Burke, the brother of the dead man and a well known vaudan priest and immediately adds him to her list of suspects for raising the mysterious creature. After the funeral she gets to the call that Benjamin has been found and he is dead, they speculate that the cemetery where he was found is close to the other murders and must be the place the creature is bound to and they decide that Anita will visit the cemetery at night and see if she can get any signs of the creature or maybe encounter it herself. Things are made worse as Anita has been getting visits from Harold Gaynor henchmen trying to force her to raise the zombie for Harold as she refuses which angers Gaynor and he might do something more forceful soon. She uses her contacts to get more information on the man and learns he likes his women disabled to make himself feel better about being disabled which explains the girl in the beginning of the novel. She also learns that Gaynor is a dangerous man with many connections but she has more pressing issues right now for her to deal with. On top of this Jean-Claude has been trying to get Anita to come and see him and she has been ignoring him despite him being the Master Vampire of the city. He has given orders for any vampire or associate who sees Anita to pass his message along with means Anita can’t escape him for much longer and he might do something drastic to get Anita to speak to him. This did feel a little strange considering they left on pretty good terms from the first novel but I do understand Anita’s reservations but she is going over the top with it and I think she should hump him and get it out of her system so she can talk to him properly without being distracted.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, Anita is doing her best to try and solve the case but the world seems to be preventing her from doing her job. First, she visits the cemetery where little Benjamin was found to see if there are any clues and she finds an empty grave that a zombie might have been raised from but it is long gone. She takes some items from the cemetery to a friend who is a clairvoyant to see if he can find some clues. At first he doesn’t want to help Anita, suffering the effects from seeing these things for so long but eventually decides to help. In the vision he sees a woman being sacrificed in a ritual presumably to raise the thing that has been killing people and the only thing he knows about the women is she wore a unique charm bracelet which isn’t a lot for Anita to go on. Anita also has a run in with Jean-Claude and this is really interesting, he wants her to start acting like a human servant which she technically is because her resistance is making him look weak which is something he can’t afford right now considering how ruthless the vampire world is but Anita refuses. After some back and forth she agrees to meet with him and try and sort something out between them but she is constantly downplaying the attraction she has for the Master Vampire and I can’t wait for the day they actually act on it. That night Anita is attacked by two zombies in her own home that obviously have orders to kill her, she is bitten during the attack but survives relatively unharmed but very shaken. She is sure that Dominga is behind it and knows that someone had to let the zombies into her apartment because they couldn’t do that by themselves and it seems she isn’t going to safe for much longer.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, I was excited to see what the creature is and who is behind raising it but I did want some more action or confrontation at this stage. Things just aren’t looking for Anita right now, she is still shaken from the zombie attack when she goes out running with Ronnie and is attacked again but by two men employed by one of Gaynor’s henchmen. These men want to take Anita and had permission to use Ronnie in order to get Anita’s compliance. The two women aren’t to be messed with and quickly gain the upper hand, Anita isn’t going to do anything about since she already knows why they were sent after her but she is going to have to do something about both Gaynor and Dominga soon. She does go for her meeting with Jean-Claude and it seems he has changed a bit since the first novel but we soon learn this is in order to keep his position as Master Vampire. He has been pressed recently because many believe he doesn’t have the power to rule the city because he can’t keep his servant, Anita, under control. He tries to explain this to her and she stubbornly refuses to move on her position threatening to kill Jean-Claude several times despite knowing that pretending to be his servant isn’t going to cost her much except putting her in close quarters with Jean-Claude. This would put Anita in the position where she couldn’t deny how she feels about Jean-Claude which she has been doing. However, when Charles can’t go into the Tenderloin to meet Wanda with her she asks Jean-Claude to go with her and this might be her way of compromising with him but I can’t wait to see what goes down now.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, Anita finally gets to speak to Wanda and learns of Gaynor’s obsession with his family history. There seems to be a family treasure that Gaynor believes is his birthright which is why he wants to raise the dead in order to find out where the treasure is. Before dealing with Gaynor, Anita has to deal with Dominga as with John Burke they found evidence of a gris-gris within his personal belongings and they believes it’s Dominga’s. Together they confront her and she does admit the gris-gris is her and absorbs it back into her body but the house is wiped clean so the police don’t find anything. However, when John and Anita press her and her grandson the grandson eventually breaks and Dominga is arrested. After this Anita hunts down the creature with the help of the police but it isn’t a normal zombie as it still has its soul and speaks to Anita. They eventually manage to kill it but not before a few police officers are killed and several injured, Anita among them.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, Anita thinks it is all over and returns home only to be kidnapped by Gaynor’s men in her weakened state. He still wants her to raise the zombie for him and she continues to refuse. She soon learns that he has been working with Dominga who has made bail because people are afraid of her. Due to her refusal, Anita is roughed up by several guards but then they drag Wanda in as the sacrifice for the raising which means other lives are on the line for Anita now. Wanda helps Anita escape her binding and helps Wanda escape, killing bodyguards and Cicely along the way. They almost manage to escape but Dominga’s creature corners them, Anita buys them some time and gives her gun to Wanda as she has been put under a spell of compulsion so she can’t leave. When she arrives at the grave, Dominga and Gaynor are disappointed with her performance and force her to begin to summoning. Rather than killing Wanda who was captured she kills two of Gaynor’s bodyguards for the sacrifice and instead of raising one zombie she raises the entire graveyard. Anita uses the zombies to kill Dominga and Gaynor before releasing the dead and she realises that Jean-Claude is there too and he admits to being cautious around Anita. Things seemingly return to normal but Anita is still being stubborn about Jean-Claude and her feelings for him. I want this sorted soon as Anita is annoying when she is being stubborn because she and Jean-Claude know she is eventually going to give in. I enjoyed The Laughing Corpse but a little less than Guilty Pleasures, as I felt the ending was a little disappointing after all the build-up but I can’t wait to get into Circus of the Damned.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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