Book Review: Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures an Anita Blake novel by Laurell K. Hamilton

This book was published in 1993 and categorized as a horror mystery novel. This is the first book in a long series of novels with the character Anita Blake. The novels' events are set in a parallel modern world where supernatural creatures such as vampires, werewolves and other were-creatures live alongside humans. Anita is an 'animator' like a necromancer, she has the power to reanimate the dead in order to find clues while solving murders as she also works as a detective in hunting and killing creatures, usually vampires who broke the law. The vampires call her the 'executioner'.

Hamilton stated that she created the character after thinking that there was much gender inequality in detective fiction.

In this first novel of the series, Anita is hired as well as blackmailed by the vampires and their master Nikolaos, to solve a series of vampire murders.

At first I thought this would be an interesting read, the book is from the 90's and set in a world very similar to Charlaine Harris' southern mystery novels later adapted into the hit TV show True Blood.
The idea of a female vampire killer that predates Buffy seemed very appealing as well. Interestingly the name 'Guilty Pleasures' is actually the bar owned by vampires that Anita goes to. Vampires owning a bar? Wow! again with the True Blood comparisons.

Though the book was well written in a main character point of view and first person narrative, I felt bored.

Perhaps I was too hung up on True Blood but I felt that the story didn't go very far,I was left confused many times. The character of Anita is not very likeable. She's got attitude, she's tough but that's not enough to sympathize or connect with. She acts bitchy and is very judgmental towards other humans. Her features look extremely like the author Hamilton. Authors do tend to create characters that look like themselves.

She is at first asked nicely by the vampires and later quite brutally to solve the vampire murders. As she investigates it seems that she probably won't find the murderer, it somehow becomes unimportant and when the murderer is found it is not surprising.

The vampires are a little cliched and not romantic. The character of Jean Claude is very intriguing and looks sexy. There is a feeling of a pre-existing 'story' between Anita and him. Jean Claude isn't that very present in this novel. Anita and him have a bigger relationship in the other books.

This novel is more of a detective noire twist on the ambiance that Anne Rice created in Gothic literature. Perhaps Hamilton is making fun of the romantic erotic vampires of Anne Rice.

It is hard liking this novel now, but back in the 90's it was original and fresh, whereas now it is regarded as too cliche to us modern day readers.

To conclude I found this book boring and will not read the rest of the series.

There's also a graphic novel version.