The Laughing Corpse

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The early Anita Blake novels find new life in trade paperback-as perfective collectables for long-time fans or as outstanding ways for new readers to sink their teeth into the series.

In The Laughing Corpse, a creature from beyond the grave is tearing a swath of murder through St. Louis. And Anita will learn that there are some mysteries better left buried-and a good deal of humans better off dead…

ReviewHarold Gaynor offers Anita Blake a million dollars to raise a 300-year-old zombie. Knowing it means a humane sacrifice will be necessary, Anita turns him down. But when dead bodies get started turning up, she realizes that an individual else has raised Harold’s zombie–and that the zombie is a killer. Anita pits her power versus the zombie and the voodoo priestess who controls it. Notice to Hollywood: forget Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Anita Blake is the real thing.

ReviewAnita Blake is one of the most arousing and attention holding fictional heroines since Scarlett O’Hara… — Publishers Weekly, starred review

Hamilton just keeps getting better and better. — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

About the Author

Laurell K. Hamilton is a full-time writer and mother. Her bestselling Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels include Narcissus in Chains, Obsidian Butterfly, Blue Moon, Burnt Offerings, The Killing Dance, Bloody Bones, The Lunatic Café, Circus of the Damned, The Laughing Corpse, and Guilty Pleasures. She is also the author of A Kiss of Shadows and A Caress of Twilight. She lives in a suburb of St. Louis with her family.

Most helpful customer reviews

82 of 85 people found the following review helpful.
Anita Blake, Animator, is up to her neck with killer zombies
By Lawrance M. Bernabo
“The Laughing Corpse” is the second in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton, although the focus is much more on her job as an Animator than as the person the vampires call The Executioner. Once again the title is taken the name of a St. Louis hangout for those who like to visit the dark side, in this case a comedy club (helpful hint: zombies do not like to be the butt of jokes). This time around Anita is in way over her head with a whole bunch of serious problems. A lord of the underworld wants to pay her big time bucks to raise someone who has been dead for a couple of hundred years and does not like it that Anita has refused because the only way to do so required a human sacrifice. Her friend Catharine is getting married and wants Anita to be a bridesmaid, which involves wearing a pink gown that has to be altered to cover all of her scars. The voodoo priestess for the entire Midwest has learned how to put a person’s soul back in their dead body, which stops the zombies from decaying, and Anita refuses to help her raise more zombies for profit. Meanwhile, Jean-Claude, the Master Vampire of St. Louis who has already put two of his marks upon our heroine, demands Anita start acting like his human servant. But the case Anita is trying to focus regards a savage zombie that is going around murdering families in their home, making her problems with three powerful people who refuse to take “No” for an answer rather inconsequential. Like it says on the coffee mug her boss would not let her have at the office, “It’s a dirty job and I get to do it.”

I was surprised to decide at the end of “The Laughing Corpse” that it was not only an improvement over the first book in the series, but one of the best horror stories I have ever read (and I read a lot of horror novels). There is a lot going on her, but Hamilton weaves the various cases, most of which would have sustained an entire novel, into a coherent narrative. I really was surprised when everything came together in the end. Hamilton has a much surer sense of her character this time around and I have every reason to believe that future novels in the series will be at least as good as this way. These books deserve their reputation and popularity if the rest are any where near as good as “The Laughing Corpse.”

Big Time Warning: this is a gruesome book. Younger readers of “The Laughing Corpse” are going to be upset by several of the scenes, especially when Anita investigates the bloody crime scenes and the climatic encounter. I read these sections in the light of day and they were still disturbing. Those who come to this series because of their love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer need to be told that this is a much darker world where the violence is brutally horrific and not beautifully choreographed. These books are much more intense. If they made this into a film it would give “The Exorcist” a run for its money. Remember, you were given fair warning.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Can’t get enough of Anita Blake!
By Fred Wiehe
Animator and vampire hunter Anita Blake is back. And everyone wants a piece of her. Master vampire Jean-Claude wants her for his own. Millionaire Harold Gaynor threatens her life unless she agrees to raise a three-hundred-year-old corpse from the grave. The catch? Only a human sacrifice will raise a zombie that old. Voodoo priestess Dominga Salvador wants her to go in to business with her, raising zombies with souls. Is nothing sacred? Necromancer John Burke wants her to help him find his brother’s murderer. However, he’s a murder suspect himself. To make matters worse, a killer zombie is on a rampage, murdering and eating whole families. It’s just an ordinary day for the Executioner.

THE LAUGHING CORPSE is the second novel in the Anita Blake series. The action is nonstop. The humor is sharp as a wooden stake. The vampires are (…). The romance is as hot as a date in Hell. And Anita is the girl of my dreams. My next date with her is in CIRCUS OF THE DAMNED. Can’t wait!

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful.
Amazing
By A
Ever wonder what the United States would be like with vampires and shapshifters? Where vampires are treated as living people and a person could be tried for murder when they staked the undead. Where the disease known as lycanthropy can make a regular person howl viciouly at the full moon and crave warm human flesh. And a woman known as an animator makes a living off of raising the dead…as in zombies. If you’ve ever wondered if the supernatural could be natural then I would encourage you to read this book and the other books of the Anita Blake series. Especially those who love blood, guts, gore, and a heroine who’s tough enough to take on the whole supernatural world that Laurell K. Hamilton has created.

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