Peter Tillman's Reviews > The Laughing Corpse

I'd been hesitant to read one of these, despite rave reviews by people I trust - I'm not much of a fantasy reader, & we're talking vampires, zombies and werewolves here. Well, folks, what we *really* have is a book in the class of the Harold Shea books - one that bends genres and transcends them. I'm not even really going to review the book . . . .

Let me back off a moment, & tell you what I usually read. I'm in the mining business, educated as a geologist & chemist. I like my SF hard, & I'm uncomfortable with gore. So why would I like (let alone rave about) a vampire book with (literally) buckets of blood? Hint - it's probably not the scene where, as a joke, Anita tosses a cop the severed hand from a dismembered infant...

It could be the scene where Anita (5'2", 102#) disarms a large rapist by sticking her derringer in his crotch & threatening to blow his balls off...

Anita's hard-boiled alright, but she's an uneasy executioner, a necromancer with scruples, even a soft touch sometimes - she tries to give a pretty prostitute a bus ticket out of town to "start over" (the whore laughs in her face). The gore is an integral part of the story, & the supernatural is treated as just a part of everyday, late 20th C. life - as alternate history, really (I don't usually like alt hist either). I'm reminded somewhat of S.M. Stirling's Gwen in "The Drakon" (another
A+ book) - though Gwen is more cheerful at work. If nothing else, this one will lay to rest any lingering thoughts that women can't be as bloody-minded as men. Highly recommended.

[Review written 1997; lightly revised 2019. My, how time flies!]