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Affliction by Laurell K. Hamilton
It’s a typical day at work for Anita Blake, if your day job is raising the dead, and being a U. S. Marshal for the preternatural branch. One phone call changed everything. It was from the mother of one of her live-in boyfriends. Micah Callahan’s father was in the hospital and he was dying. Micah had been estranged from his family for years, but now, his mother wants Anita to bring the prodigal son home for a last good-bye.
Anita thinks it’s going to be a tearful trip down memory lane, until she learns that Sheriff Callahan was attacked on the job by a zombie. The bite is rotting him from the inside out, as if it’s turning him into a zombie while he’s still alive, but Anita knows zombies and they aren’t contagious. But something is killing Micah’s father, and he’s not the only victim. And there are the missing persons, far too many to explain away. While Micah deals with his family, Anita is pulled into a case so terrible she has to call for back up from friends and lovers that are no more human than the some of the monsters they’re hunting, and even that isn’t enough. Edward, Death himself, comes with badge and flamethrower to watch over his friend, Anita Blake, while she fights for her life and the lives of those she loves.
The Anita Blake series have been auto reads for me for years. There was a point when the books were getting to be too many sex scenes to the point that there was not much story to the story, but she seems to have tapered that off a bit in the last few books which makes them so much better. I had stopped buying them when she started going all sex and no story so I have been getting them from the library since then. The last two or three I am tempted to buy because they were more story than sex. This installment kept me interested and I finished in about 24 hours. The case was interesting and her interaction with the locals is always colorful :) It has a lot of twists and turns that Anita and company have to ponder over. Edward has a big role in this one and did not creep me out as much as in some of the other books, maybe Donna is mellowing him a bit (if a sociopath can be mellowed). In this book she interacts and grows in her relationship a lot with Nicky. Jean-Claude only makes a brief but significant appearance.
I was glad that I read this book in the series, it moved the overarching storyline along as well as had a great case to solve.