Review : A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris

Review of Touch of Dead

The Sookie Stackhouse Stories, this is, unsurprisingly, a collection of short stories featuring Harris' most popular heroine, a telepathic barmaid lusted after by virtually every male supernatural creature who crosses her path. The series is now up to its ninth installment and the stories, written for various collections, span Sookie's character trajectory over that time. Harris provides a time frame, and presents them chronologically. I would think that elements of each plot would be less satisfying for a reader unfamiliar with Harris's universe but enough background is woven in that that new readers won't be wholly lost. Familiar readers may welcome the return of characters who are now dead or estranged, and though Harris writes in the introduction that she was unsure when first approached to write a Sookie short that she'd be able to her justice in a more abbreviated format, I think she sells herself a little short. The stories fit into the overall narrative relatively smoothly, without creating events that would make the novels incomplete.

"Fairy Dust" takes place after the fourth novel, Dead to the World - Sookie is asked to investigate the murder of Claudette, a fairy who works as an exotic dancer, by her surviving triplets, Claude (also a dancer) and Claudine, and through a combination of telepathy, clever questioning and her knowledge of the Fae, is able to identify the killer and the motive.

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