Dead Until Dark

At the end of last week, I found myself headed for a long train ride with nothing to read, a precarious position for someone who barely knows how to charge her ipod. I was actually ahead in my galley and manuscript reading for work for the first time in…ever, and had just finished the un-put-down-able “Time of My Life,” by Allison Winn Scotch. Hoping for another score, I stopped into the Borders by Penn Station with the vague idea I might try “American Wife,” by Curtis Sittenfeld, the story of Laura Bush’s life put to fiction. Instead I found myself with the unexpected purchase of Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris, the first in a series of books upon which the new HBO show True Blood is based.

This all happened because I couldn’t find American Wife anywhere, which is always aggravating for people who work in publishing. It’s hard enough to get people to buy books! And to go into a store, looking for a book you know is popular, and not only does it not stand out when you walk in but is not in its proper place in the fiction section? Sigh.

What WAS appropriately placed in the front, due to the popularity of the HBO shows, was Dead Until Dark. Though I wouldn’t normally pick out a mystery book about vampires (despite having been a Buffy fan back in the day) my curiosity was piqued by it’s connection to the show (http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/), which recently occupied me for 6 straight hours on a lazy Sunday afternoon. As the Amtrak train pulled out of Penn Station at 5:45 p.m., I dove into Harris’s campy, sexy world of mind readers, vampires and shape-shifters and by Sunday morning, had polished the whole thing off. So good!

The story is set in the fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, sometime in the near-ish future, where vampires are “out of the coffin." No longer hiding their existence, some try to co-exist peacefully with people (now that a synthetic blood has been developed for them, making it not totally necessary to feed on humans), while others hold strong to their predatory ways. One vampire in particular, Bill Compton, tries to “mainstream” by settling back into his family estate (which was left empty by the passing of one of his descendants) and catches the eye of pretty waitress Stookie Stackhouse. Sookie has a bit of a disability of her own: she can read minds, which has hampered almost all her relationships, let alone a sexual one (try getting in the mood when you know what they really think of your butt, she laments). Though she tries to keep up a mental guard blocking her from people’s heads, in Bill, she finds peace, since for some reason his thoughts remain effortlessly closed off to her. Just as an attraction starts to develop (really, who can resist a dark, brooding vampire who was last human during the Civil War? No, seriously, he’s kind of hot, check out Stephen Moyer http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/ who takes on the role for the show) the unease, tensions and suspicions of the supernatural come to a head in this small town in terrifying and violent ways. A series of murders erupts, targeting women who have been involved with the vamps. Will Sookie be next?

Addictive as the television show, this book too proved impossible to walk away from (even if you are confined to a railway car and don’t have a choice). Memorable and recognizable characters dot the hot, southern landscape, and Harris plays with the town’s reaction to the vampires as a metaphor for racism or homophobia, and the effects of vampire blood as similar to drug use. Finishing the book, you kind of miss the paranormal and captivating world these characters inhabit. Is it weird I kind of wished I could work with Sookie at Merlotte’s, dodge the undead, and hang out with people who remember the Civil War? Probably, but hey, I did say I was a Buffy fan. My only regret was that I didn't have the second installment for the train ride home!