Hair Raising by Kevin J. Anderson

 

This installment of this zombie P.I. series starts with Dan doing some investigating for Rusty, a “full-time” werewolf. One of the major storylines in this book involves fighting between the “full-time” werewolves & the “monthlies”. The full-time werewolves are werewolves that are furry all the time. Monthlies are only furry during a full moon. As with the other books in this series, there are a few other storylines going at the same time. One of Dan’s other clients in this book is the local coroner, Archibald Victor. Victor hires him to look into his consumer complaints against a spare body part establishment. Looking into Victor’s complaints puts him in the path of zombie big time thug/businessman Tony Cralo, owner of Tony Cralo's Spare Parts Emporium. I always enjoy these books because they usually make me laugh, but there is usually one storyline that pulls at the heartstrings. For me, in this book, that would be the story of zombie Steve Halstead. Steve & Dan both became zombies and crawled out of their graves at the same time. Steve comes to Dan because of his son. Steve’s wife refuses to let him see his son claiming that seeing his father as a zombie will terrify him, yet she is demanding child support. Steve wants to be able to see his son. He also says that he left a good life insurance policy that should have provided for his son when he died. This is the other thing I love about this series – the characters & that you care about them. Even though a lot of things in these books are humorous, the “monsters” in these books are portrayed just like regular people. There are good and bad paranormal characters, not all of them are physically perfect. Many of them are totally average and might have a humdrum job – the only thing separating them from a regular human is fur, or scales, or they came back from death. I loved seeing the returning characters & I liked seeing the new characters like Adriana the zombie and Antoine Stickler, vampire tattoo artist. I would love to see a love match for Jerry the zombie – maybe Adriana or the patchwork princess? The ending was very satisfying. Loved the mysteries and can’t wait for the next installment in the series!