The Laughing Corpse
| Author | Laurell K. Hamilton |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Craig White |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter |
| Genre | mystery, horror |
| Publisher | Ace Books (Ace edition) |
|
Publication date
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1 September 1994 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 293 p. (Ace edition) |
| ISBN | (Ace edition) |
| OCLC | 30961442 |
| Preceded by | Guilty Pleasures |
| Followed by | Circus of the Damned |
The Laughing Corpse is the second novel in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series of horror/mystery novels by Laurell K. Hamilton. The book continues the adventures of Anita Blake, as she attempts to solve a particularly grisly set of murders, while simultaneously avoiding two potential threats to her life from people interested in using her talents as a zombie animator. Meanwhile, Anita continues to attempt to come to grips with her powers and her relationship with Jean-Claude, the vampire master of St. Louis and Anita's would be lover/master.
A comic book adaptation of The Laughing Corpse was released in 2008, with the first volume of the collected issues achieving the New York Times Bestseller List for graphic books.
The Laughing Corpse takes place a month after the events of Guilty Pleasures and begins with Anita and her manager Bert visiting Harold Gaynor, a local millionaire that wants Anita to animate a 300-year-old corpse. He informs Anita that he'd be willing to pay millions of dollars for her to do this, even supplying a willing "white goat" that would be needed for an animation of that level. Anita immediately refuses the offer, with Bert agreeing not to take on the case after discovering that the "white goat" was a euphemism for a human sacrifice.
Anita is later called in to a murder scene by Dolph, the head of the area's supernatural crimes unit. A family was discovered to be torn apart, with a child missing and possibly still alive. Anita theorizes that it would likely be a flesh-eating zombie as there was too much blood left at the scene and that only two people could raise and control a zombie of that power: herself and vaudun priestess Senora Dominga Salvador. The only other person capable of this feat, Peter Burke, recently died.
Anita sets up a meeting with Salvador through her mentor Manny Rodriguez, where she discovers that Salvador is both very evil and very powerful. Salvador demonstrates her technique for capturing the souls of the dead and installing them in zombies, preventing the zombies from degrading and allowing further punishment of the dead. She invites Anita to become her partner and help create ensouled zombies for profit, to which Anita refuses and is chased out of the house by an unseen creature.
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