Ames’ review of Hit List by Laurell K. Hamilton.
A serial killer is hunting the Pacific Northwest, murdering victims in a gruesome and spectacular way. The local police suspect “monsters” are involved, and have called in Anita Blake and Edward, US Marshals who really know their monsters, to catch the killer.
But some monsters are very real. The Harlequin have been the bogeymen of the vampire world for more than a thousand years; they are a secret so dark that even to speak their name can earn you a death sentence. Now they are here in America, hunting weretigers…and human police.
The Harlequin serve the Mother of All Darkness, the first vampire. She was supposed to be dead, but only her body was destroyed. Now she needs a new one, and she’s decided that Anita Blake’s is the body she wants. Edward thinks the serial killings are a trap to lure Anita closer to the most dangerous vampire they’ve ever hunted. The vampires call Edward “Death,” and Anita the “Executioner,” but Mommy Darkest is coming to kill one and possess the other, and she doesn’t care how many others have to die along the way.
Hit List is book 20 in LKH’s Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series. It sees a return of Anita acting in her US Marshall role…and Edward…and Olaf.
Anita and Edward are in Seattle on the trail of a serial killer. This is the fourth weretiger victim and some things are clicking into place for Anita. The ‘serial killer’ here is the Harlequin and it doesn’t take long to figure out that they were killing tigers to draw Anita away from her men in St. Louis so they can kidnap her. The Mother of All Darkness wants to possess Anita, and the Harlequin are to capture her alive. Along the way, Anita has to deal with some misogynistic Marshalls, some newbies and an old friend, Olaf, who we remember is a sociopathic killer who considers Anita his girlfriend.
We don’t really see anything new here. I mentioned in a comment on goodreads that this book had a very episodic feel to it. If the repetitive stuff was scrapped and the redundant dialog edited out, this would have been more of a novella I feel. So you can see where some of the problems were for me. In past books I’ve mentioned that Anita says “What does that mean?” a lot and in Hit List it was said by various other characters. It got annoying. And it’s like Anita would say something, that we the reader get (because hey, it’s book 20!) and then the character she was talking to would say “What does that mean?” Which would basically make Anita say the same thing over, in a different way. Not to be repetitive myself, but that was annoying.
Another reason this felt episodic was that it takes place over just a few days. And the ending wrapped up very abruptly. In fact, there was so much talk talk talk that I was wondering when the action would pick back up and then it did and then it was over. Really fast, just like that.
One thing that got on my nerves was Rabborn, the other US Marshall that hated Anita because she was a woman in law enforcement. Soooo much time was spent on that and then it went nowhere. It was redundant and like Anita said, she doesn’t have to prove herself to anyone so why bother? I honestly felt like that was filler. Hit List was just full of filler.
All the good things I liked in Bullet (book 19) were absent in this installment. But there was a new thing, or a new someone: Ethan. He’s a weretiger who’s living with the red tiger clan in Seattle. He’s not a red tiger so he just lives on the edges of the clan, not accepted, but tolerated. For some odd reason, I liked this new character and yes, bedmate, of Anita’s. Ethan actually has 4 tiger strains in his system. And Ethan gets added to the mix because despite the fact Anita thinks she has the ardeur under control, she really doesn’t it, and it rears its ugly head again. Blech.
I’m giving Hit List a 3 out of 5 (C).
Oh and before I forget…something’s really up with Olaf by the end of the book!
This book is available from Berkley. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
You can read more from ~ames~ at Thrifty Reader.
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