The Laughing Corpse

Harold Gaynor, an extremely rich man in a wheel chair has offered Anita an exorbitant amount of money to raise a corpse. Why? To raise a corpse there needs to be a sacrifice, usually for Anita all she needs is a chicken or maybe a goat if it's greater than 20 or so years dead. The corpse Gaynor wants raised is something like 400 years old and the power required to raise something that old from the dead requires no ordinary sacifice. He offers to provide a 'white goat' a euphamism for a human sacrifice.
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Anita doesn't just say no, she says HELL no. So then Gaynor sends a goon to offer her more money whilst no one's around to see her agree. Anita offers to send the goon back in a box. Another goon tries to kidnap her. She manages to convince him to let her go with the very persuasive argument of shoving the barrel of her gun an inch deep into his ball sack and offering him a gender re-assignment. So you get the jist, no love of power or money is going to convince her.

Meanwhile she's helping the cops with a gruesome case of what appears to be a flesh eating zombie on the loose which is extremely rare. Previously in recorded history only 2 or 3 other cases have been documented and the only person she can think of who might have created such a thing is the Voodoo Queen of St Louise. Dominga Salvador. So what does Anita do? Why of course she invites herself over to ask Dominga if she happened to have raised and lost control of a flesh eating zombie recently. Such tact.

Dominga Salvador shows Anita a neat trick she's learnt. Dominga has somehow learned how to capture a persons soul as they die, re-animate the body as a zombie, and put the soul back in. This creates a zombie that never loses it's wits, does not decompose, is completely aware and yet also completely obedient. In otherwords, they are a perfect slave. Dominga wants Anita to help her churn out these soul filled slave zombies for profit. Anita gives a counter offer of lead poisoning via her pistol applicator. See what I mean? Tactful, subtle.

So now Anita has a voodoo queen and a ruthless millionair wanting to take her down. Fun ensues.

Thoughts

This is more of an action, drama, murder mystery and suspense kind of book. There is precious little to none of the erotic side of things in the whole book. Though we do get to witness Anita interviewing a paraplegic prostitue called wheelchair Wanda, which is interesting. There's also a zombie creation that I guess you could call a chimera which is downright horrifying and I try not to create a mental image when able.

I give this book a 7.2/10, it's not much for plot but allows the reader to learn more about the metaphysics of voodoo magic and raising the dead. It also allows you to build a better image of who Anita is as a person.

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With this series I apologise for the lack of cat photos, I only own e-book versions of this so screen shots and stuff on pixapbay will have to suffice.

To better understand the world of Anita Blake, read my world synopsis here