Guilty Pleasures

Anita Blake raises the dead for a living and is a licensed vampire executioner in St. Louis. Nikolaos, the city's master vampire, forces her to investigate a string of vampire murders. Along the way, Jean-Claude saves her and marks her against her will, and the killer Edward shows up wanting Nikolaos's daytime hideout. Anita learns the murderer is Zachary, a dead animator who stays alive with a charm fed by the killings. With Edward and help from Rafael's wererats, she breaks into the Circus of the Damned. They kill Nikolaos and her servant, Zachary goes down, and Jean-Claude becomes the new Master of the City. At the end, he asks Anita out.

1. Behind the scenesHorror dressed as hardboiled crime

   It came out in 1993 from Ace as a paperback. It blends the supernatural with American hardboiled detective fiction, told in first person by a cynical investigator.

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2. Behind the scenesIt became a Marvel comic

   On October 20, 2006, the comic adaptation from Marvel and Dabel Brothers began. It ran 12 issues and was later collected in volumes.

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