Skin Trade
Book 17, Anita Blake Series
Laurell K. Hamilton

When a vampire serial killer sends Anita Blake a grisly souvenir from Las Vegas, she has to warn Sin City's local authorities what they're dealing with. Only it's worse than she thought. Police officers and one executioner have been slain - paranormal style.
Anita heads to Vegas, where she's joined by three other federal marshals, including the ruthless Edward hiding behind his mild mannered persona. It's a good thing Edward always has her back, because when she gets close to the bodies, Anita senses "tiger" too strongly to ignore it. And the weretigers are powerful in Las Vegas, which means the odds of her rubbing someone very powerful the wrong way just got a lot higher.

This book really gets back to the basics of the series. It is once again a supernatural thriller/mystery. Edward is back (and he makes every Anita Blake novel better) and so is Olaf. The addition of Olaf makes this novel all the more interesting.

Yes, there are graphic sex scenes in it, I've come to learn that this is just part of the author's odd Mary Jane infatuation with Anita, but it's a lot less than in other books and it's not the main plot.

The main plot involves the serial killer vampire that she had dealt with in St. Louis, only he's much stronger and older than she ever suspected. Marmee Noir, the Mother of all Vampire is also in this novel. While the plot is engaging and solid, the ending (both with Marmee Noir and with the serial killer) leaves a lot to be desired. It seems as if things are building up to a major fight, and then things happen quickly and are done. I was disappointed in the ending and even more disappointed in what happened with Marmee Noir. For a character with that much power and potential, what happened with his character was nothing more than a disappointment without any real confrontation.

The ending is a bit perverse, but once again, it's something you come to expect when reading this whole series.

Normally I'd give this four snails because I really did like the plot, however, the anti-climactic ending kind of ruined things for me and therefore I'm docking it a snail.

My rating: Three out of five snails.