DEAD AND GONE by Charlaine Harris, ©2009, Ace, 312pgs., $25.45 Hardcover

        Dead And Gone is the ninth book in the Sookie Stackhouse series.  Most of the regular readers of this column have learned that I'm a big fan of the series.
        For those of you not familiar with the series, it takes place in the small fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana.  A Louisiana, that along with the rest of the world, where vampires are known to live among us.  In this world, vampirism has been found to be a virus in which the infected have to drink blood to survive.  Due to a Japanese company creating a synthetic blood, the vampires have let the world know of their existence.
        At the start of this novel, the were-creatures and shapeshifters decide to do the same as the vampires and let the world know of their existence, an event that was foreshadowed in the previous novel of the series.
        Sookie's a telepath and a waitress at a bar called Merlotte's, owned by her boss, Sam, who is a shapeshifter.  True shapeshifters can turn into any type of animal while the Weres can only turn into one type.  Sam's preferred animal form is that of a collie.
        The Weres and shapeshifters "coming-out"

goes over well at Merlotte's.  It's at closing time that things go wrong.  Sam gets a call that his stepfather has shot his mother, and Sookie's sister-in-law, Crystal, is found crucified behind the bar.  Since Crystal was a Werepanther, there are those who believe that it's a hate crime.
        While the book starts with a murder mystery (and ends with the solution), the book is more about another group of supernaturals in Sookie's world, the fairies.
        Sookie and her brother Jason have fairy blood.  Their great-great-grandfather Niall is a fairy prince, and the novel is about a war that is happening in the fairy world along with being a murder mystery.
        Of course, plenty of faces from the previous books appear from the previous novels.  The vampires Bill Compton, Sookie's neighbor and former lover, and Eric Northman, another former lover of Sookie's, both make appearances in the novel along with Amelia, a witch and Sookie's housemate, and Calvin, leader of the Were-panthers.  A few new faces are also introduced.  Despite a huge cast of characters in this short novel, Harris manages to make us take an interest in all of them.
        Highly recommended, even if you haven't read any or the other books in the series, though like any series they read better if you start from the beginning.
  
  
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