Dead and Gone / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

The vamps have been out for years, and now the weres and shifters have decided to follow the lead of the undead and reveal their existence to the ordinary world. Sookie Stackhouse already knows about them, of course - her brother turns into a panther at the full moon, she's friend to the local were pack, and Sam, her boss at Merlotte's bar, is a shapeshifter.

The great revelation goes well at first - then the horribly mutilated body of a were-panther is found in the parking lot of Merlotte's, and Sookie agrees to use her telepathic talent to track down the murderer. But there is a far greater danger than this killer threatening Bon Temps: a race of unhuman beings, older, more powerful, and far more secretive than the vampires or the werewolves, is preparing for war. And Sookie is an all-too-human pawn in their ages-old battle...

2019 Re-Read

“I added to my mental list of the odd things I'd done that day. I'd entertained the police, sunbathed, visited at a mall with some fairies, weeded, and killed someone. Now it was powdered-corpse removal time. And the day wasn't over yet.”

I’m enjoying the inherent humour in this series. Harris knows that she’s writing soap opera story lines and she’s enjoying it. Especially when Sookie arms herself to deal with malevolent fairies—with a garden trowel and a squirt gun of lemon juice! And Sookie saying to herself, “What had set the fae world off? I’d never seen one. Now you couldn’t throw a trowel without hitting a fairy.”

And once again, I’m carrying a torch for Bill:

“As I watched Bill, waiting with apparent calm for death to come to him, I had a flash of him as I'd known him: the first vampire I'd ever met, the first man I'd ever gone to bed with, the first suitor I'd ever loved. Everything that followed had tainted those memories, but for one moment I saw him clearly, and I loved him again.”