Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris

The Sookie Stackhouse series, book 12

Review of book 10, Dead in the Family, can be found here
Review of book 11, Dead Reckoning, can be found here

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With Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), in town, it’s the worst possible time for a body to show up in Eric Northman’s front yard—especially the body of a woman whose blood he just drank.
Now, it’s up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl’s fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who’s out to make Sookie’s world come crashing down
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It's hard to review this book, because I consumed it in less than a day. (And then after watching episode 1 of season 5 of True Blood, keeping track of what happens got really murky!)

Like the previously reviewed Dead in the Family (#10) and Dead Reckoning (#11) it spans over just a handful of days, but once again I genuinely enjoyed reading it and returning to Sookie and her, shall we say, remarkable life. It ties up some loose strings and you get the feeling Sookie is slowly getting to a happier place than she's been in a lot of the previous books.

It's a quick read with a whole lot of things going on without the book feeling crammed and they are things that are entirely reasonable to happen so quickly are many are consequences of others. There are also a lot of trivial things like taking a shower and putting on nail polish; however this is a guilty pleasure of mine and I really don't mind reading about things like that - because I enjoy Harris' way of writing. But I could imagine if you'd never read any of the other books and picked this one up, you'd wonder what kind of rubbish you'd just walked into.

I was happy to see Sookie seem more logical when it comes to her love life; it's time for things to change. It was also cool seeing her with more normal responsibilities (in regards to Merlotte's). And though as I've never liked them (or their place in the story) I am happy to see the faeries go. I can't say much more without spoiling the plot, but I can say that for a big fan of the books (or really if you're just in the habit of finishing a series no matter what) this is far from a bad book to make your way through. After Dead in the Family I was almost ready to abandon ship, but Deadlocked left me hanging in a way that makes me want more - lots more, not just one final book.

327 pages / published in 2012

 Review by Iben Jakobsen, BoB, 2012