Tate Hallaway, Dead Sexy

Dead Sexy

Tate Hallaway

Berkley, May 2007, $14.00

ISBN: 0425215083

Mercury Crossing bookstore manager and witch Garnet Lacey muses about how many dead essences live in Madison, Wisconsin. However, she also ponders fate that by being late she missed a sure date with death as a Vatican paramilitary assassination squad killed the other eleven members of her coven (see TALL, DARK & DEADLY). Of course conjuring up Lilith to dispatch the Vatican killers helped.

Garnet and her boyfriend at that time, Parrish the vampire, disposed of the bodies and other related evidence. Meanwhile, to her chagrin, a zombie student paid for a copy of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Voodoo" with counterfeit money. That is followed up by FBI Special Agent Gabriel Domingues investigating the homicides of six priests whose corpses have returned with all evidence pointing towards Garnet. She informs her current boyfriend, Sebastian the vampire, that she needs Parrish's help. Sebastian is outraged by this while the zombie populace is growing geometrically with some of them not even students at U of W. Garnet and the new Voodoo queen have a high noon showdown as this college city is only big enough for one practitioner.

The second Garnet gem is a delightful whodunit fantasy starring a likable protagonist who keeps the tale together as she relates what is going on, mostly wrong, in her life in a sort of offbeat chick lit style. The storyline is fast-paced and can stand alone though references to the previous novel abound. The supernatural species like vampires, zombies, and FBI agents seem genuine even though the plot is tongue in cheek. Tate Hallaway combines romance, paranormal and mystery into a fun read.

Harriet Klausner