Review by J. Stephen Bolhafner
Published May 25, 2008

Fans will appreciate the 16th entry in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series, although there's not much vampire hunting going on in this one.

"Blood Noir" concentrates on Anita's relationship with Jason, a werewolf stripper who works for Jean-Claude, the vampire Prince of the City. Jean-Claude is Anita's lover, or rather one of her lovers, which complicates her position as official vampire executioner for a multistate region centered in St. Louis.

This book doesn't take place in St. Louis, though -- one of the few in the series that doesn't. This time Anita travels to North Carolina, to Jason's hometown. Jason is Anita's close personal friend. With Anita, this increasingly shades into "lover," but although they have been occasional bedmates, her relationship with Jason has always been decidedly casual.

Jason has a problem. His father is dying, and though he and his father never got along, he feels the need to go see him. The thing is, his father thinks Jason is gay, so he asks Anita to go with him and be introduced as his girlfriend.

Complications quickly arise. It turns out that Jason looks exactly like twin brothers who went to school with him. He's related to them, but not that closely. Still, the resemblance is uncanny.

The twins' father is the governor and thinking of a run for president. Meanwhile, one of the twins is about to get married. To describe the media presence in town as a "horde" would be an understatement.

Then someone who looks exactly like that soon-to-be-married twin checks into a hotel with a strange brunette (the fiancée is blonde). The real complication, though, comes from a source hinted at in the title for fans of the series. To say more would give too much away.

My one quibble is that the mystery is perfunctory. Near the end, when Anita is trying to put the pieces together and discover what the reader has known for some time, I actually said out loud, "Oh, come on, Anita's not that stupid" -- although on reflection I realized that her momentary lapse is in fact appropriate and explained. Still, I miss the days when I didn't know ahead of Anita just what the heck was going on.