Dead Until Dark

Welcome to the world of young adult horror fiction. The first book that I am reading is "Dead Until Dark". The protagonist in this story is Sookie Stackhouse. She is a cocktail waitress in a small town called Bon Temp, Louisiana. Sookie has an unusual gift but to her it is a disability.

She is a clairvoyant and spent most of her life trying to block people's thoughts out of her own mind. Trying to have a coherent conversation with people made it difficult, so the town just deemed her crazy Sookie.

Her life was not going anywhere until she met Bill the vampire, at her place of work, Merlotte's. Apparently, prior to her meeting the Vampires came out of the coffin. To acclimate into society, they claimed to have a virus that causes them to have a reaction to sunlight, garlic, and silver. Their blood have great healing powers not to mention that it is a highly potent aphrodisiac. Which makes it a hot commodity on the black market.

Drainers, like the Rattrays or the Ratts as Sookie often refers to them, were syphoning Bill's blood using the silver to incapacitate him. Sookie gets a chain from her brother's truck and to the rescue she goes saving Bill. Later Bill returns the favor after the Ratts retaliate against Sookie and gives his blood to restore her back to health. However, the Ratts suddenly become dead meat due to a Tornado that touched down in just their trailer park, Sookie puts two and two together and figures that Bill did that and is in awe of his vampire power.

Jason Stackhouse, Sookie's brother, describe as a hottie with brains but a womenizer found out she had a fight with the Ratts and was seen socializing with Bill Compton the vampire. Jason did not like the association with the vampire but Sookie's Grandmother did. Sookie herself seem to enjoy this new relationship, for once in her life she could be herself and relax. She could not here the vampire's thoughts which was wonderful for her. It seems that word got around about Sookie's new boyfriend and everyone had an opinion. Like it was not bad enough they thought of her as crazy but now they thought she was pathetic because the only relationship she could have is with a man that is neither alive or dead or dead until dark. Bon Temps is a very small town, if you were to fart the whole town would know about it.

Meanwhile, between all this romance going on, murders of local women, who work blue collar jobs and have a proclivity to vampires, known as fangbangers occurred and Jason and Bill were the primary suspects. Bill, because the victims had bites in their necks from vampires but no loss of blood. Jason, because he dated and did other things with the victims, (i.e. ala Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson and recently McSteamy). Which made him the ultimate suspect..

To take suspicion off her brother and her beau, Sookie took to playing detective with the help of Bill. To Bill's dismay it did not turn out productive. Upon venturing to the vampire club called Fangtasia to get information, they encountered Eric, the Nordic God of a vampire and the oldest and strongest in the area. Eric was very enamored by Sookie and her gift and in the vampire world that is yummy but for Sookie that could be very dangerous. They did not get very far into the investigation but she managed to be obligated to help Eric in the future.

Eric was not the only vampire other than Bill that Sookie met. Enter Malcolm, Liam, and Diane. They made Nosferatu look tame. They came to cause Bill trouble, they menanced any vampire like Bill who wanted to mainstream into human society, and they died from a lynching by fire. Sookie felt who ever is killing the women in Bon Temp, put the bug in the ear of the lynch mob.
More killings happened including the murder of Sookie's beloved Gran and her brother Jason was arrested. He was found in his truck unconscious and a tape in his lap. Circumstantial evidence was against him. He had a tendency to brag to his friends Rene Lenier and Hoyt Fortenberry about his many conquest, yet he failed to mention his penchant for video taping his escapades. Alas, this was a set up and detective Andy Bellefleur relish the thought of Jason being the pervert he always thought he was. This was a bias thought seeing they were sort of high school rivals.

Sookie got her brother a lawyer and got him out on bail. During the wait for the trial, Sookie and Bill was summoned by Eric to help with investigation of fraud in his club Fangtasia. Sookie met yet another vampire, Long Shadow, a native american. It turned out Long Shadow was embezzling from Eric. Eric had to kill Long Shadow before Sookie could say his name out loud after reading the mind of one of the employees interrogated. That is against vampire law to kill another but he was smitten by Sookie. The whole experience put Sookie off of vampires for a while. Running out of space to be continued.