Laurell K. Hamilton: Skin Trade

Review by Vicky London

Warning: Mild Spoilers

Skin Trade is the 17th Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novel. Anita heads to Las Vegas after Vittorio, a serial killer vampire, sends her a head in a box as an invitation. Vittorio escaped execution in St. Louis and it looks like his cat and mouse game with Anita will come to an end in Vegas. Anita and her fellow U.S. Marshalls; Edward/Ted, Bernardo Spotted Horse and Olaf/Otto Jeffries go to Sin City to help the local police catch the killer. Vittorio has been murdering strippers and is responsible for the gruesome death of a Vegas SWAT team.

Antia is dealing with the usual issues when it comes to a police investigation; needing to prove herself as a woman and get the cops to forget about her numerous lovers and their supernatural persuasions. Luckily, she has Edward to help out even though he’s brought along Olaf with his creepy, serial killer crush on Anita. Dealing with an extremely powerful and dangerous vampire is plenty on her plate but the local tiger clan and good old Marmee Noir throw a monkey wrench in her plans. Staying alive and staying focused is becoming harder than ever and Antia is wondering if it’s time to hand in her badge.

The plot of Skin Trade was pretty good but LKH still hasn’t hit that balance that I really want to see in the story. The books tend to be all police procedural or all weird political paranormal shenanigans. I would love to see more balance between the action and her life. I’m missing Jean Claude, and since he only had a few sentences of dialogue in Skin Trade it wasn’t nearly enough for me. It would have been nice to have a few chapters of normality (or what passes for normal for Anita) back home with the guys at the beginning and end of the book. I found that any details of that kind were glossed over. That left me wanting more in that area as well.

I’m still having a problem with the dialogue. Different characters used the same phrases that sounded way more Anita than the character speaking. For example, Bernardo asked one of the cops what “flavor of Fed” they were talking with when Anita had just used the same term in her head shortly before. The repetitiveness of some of the words/phrases bordered on annoying including “metaphysical”, “bastard”, and “moody bastard” (also used by the author in the dedication to describe herself and her husband). One thing that hasn’t changed is Anita’s annoying editorial comments. They just come off as smug and self-important which turns me off. The pacing was better, but she still analyzed the crap out of everything both verbally and internally. At least it’s happening a little faster.

There were some surprising new developments in Skin Trade, including a new supernatural race that will probably be rearing it’s collective head in the upcoming books. It definitely has the possibility to be interesting and dangerous. The book ended on a note that made me smile since I’m a dog lover but I won’t spoil that for you. For those of you who were looking for more of the police stuff this is one you’ll definitely want to read. If I had to rate it, I would give Skin Trade four out of five stars.

Want to watch a quick little video of LKH talking about Skin Trade? Click here to view.

ISBN: 0425227723
Release Date: June 2, 2009

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