Skin Trade

I finished Laurell K. Hamilton's "SKIN TRADE" over the weekend. This is the latest book in her Anita Blake series. It takes place in Las Vegas Nevada and it is a straight U.S. Marshall/ Vampire executioner gig with very little relationship baggage this trip. In fact Anita is in town with Edward, Otto, and Spotted Horse to help the locals stop a serial killer named Vittorio an insane master vampire. This doesn't mean there is no supernatural weirdness involved, in fact the local were-tigers seem to ramp up Anita's strain of tiger lycanthropy to an off the chart level. The tigers take to calling her "Little Queen " much to her frustration and the suspicion of the local cops. It turns out to be a new bid by the Mother of All Darkness to regain more power as she awakens in Europe. If Anita didn't have enough worries on the supernatural front there is Otto to contend with. He's decided that he would like to date Anita. Otto is a serial killer with a very specific victim profile petite brunettes and a very negetive ideas about women. This is definitely a first for the entire U. S. Marshall team and no one is quite sure how to handle the situation. I enjoyed this installment of the Anita Blake series much more than Harlequin or the one before it because it wasn't all about sex. Not that I object to sex in the books I read, but it shouldn't be the object of the story. This has been a problem in the last few books of both series but it looks like Hamilton is back on track.