Dead as a Doornail

I came back to this series right after Dead to the World, which left me fond of blank Eric and worried about Jason. I expected Dead as a Doornail to slow down. It does not. Charlaine Harris published it with Ace Books in 2005, a 320 page mass market paperback in the Sookie Stackhouse series tied to ISBN 9780441013333. It is book five, set a few weeks after the witch war, with Sookie Stackhouse waiting tables at Merlotte's in Bon Temps, Louisiana. Her brother Jason is about to change for the first time. Someone is shooting shifters. Wolves need a new leader. Vampires keep calling in debts. I read it across three nights and kept checking my doors after the fire scene.

Sookie opens tired in a way that feels earned. She hears every human thought around her and cannot shut it off. Work noise follows her home. Her grandmother's old house matters because it goes quiet when she is alone. Jason, her brother, was bitten by a werepanther and waits for his first full moon turn. Sookie loves him and dreads what Hotshot will ask of him. She feels guilty for missing the bite while tangled in vampire trouble. That guilt drives much of what she does here.

A brother changing

Jason was bitten by Felton Norris, a werepanther from Hotshot, in the prior book. Now the moon is near. Calvin Norris, the steady leader of the Hotshot panthers, comes to guide Jason through it. Calvin looks plain except for strange eyes, stocky and graying, calm where Felton is volatile. He tells Sookie what to expect without softening. Jason will hurt. He will turn into something half man and half cat. He will need people who stay.

Sookie drives Jason to Hotshot and waits the night out. The change is rough. Bones shift. Skin strains. Jason cries out, then goes still in a way that scares her more than noise. What rises is not a full cat because Jason was bitten, not born. He becomes a panther man, strong and bewildered, knowing Sookie yet moved by instinct. Sookie talks low and keeps still. Calvin stands close with hands ready. By morning Jason is human again, sore and bright eyed, talking fast about rush and magic and altered sight.

His girlfriend Crystal Norris, also a werepanther and kin to Calvin, hovers with sharp manners. She is flirty with Jason and cold to Sookie, marking ground. Calvin warns Sookie that bitten panthers rank below born ones. That rule will sting later when suspicion lands on Jason. For now Sookie drives home with Jason asleep in the seat and her head ringing.

Shots in the dark

Sam Merlotte, Sookie's boss and a shapeshifter who favors a collie shape, is shot in the leg while running at night. He survives but cannot work. He asks Sookie to visit Fangtasia in Shreveport and borrow a bartender from Eric Northman. Sookie dreads asking Eric for anything. Every favor has hooks. She goes because the bar needs hands. Eric sends Charles Twining, a new man with pirate clothes and easy charm. Charles pours well and learns names fast. Sookie finds him a touch too curious about her hours and the woods behind her house.

Calvin Norris is shot next, badly. Word comes of other attacks across parishes. Shifters and were animals are being picked off by rifle fire. One woman dies in a parking lot. Others hide their wounds. Humans see random crime. Supes see a pattern aimed at two natured folk. Calvin, feverish, tells Sookie some in Hotshot suspect Jason. The thinking is cruel but plain. Jason is new, bitten unwillingly, angry about change, seen near humans who hate supes. Hotshot justice is swift when roused. Sookie must find the real shooter before the next full moon or Jason will pay under panther law.

I kept thinking about how family pulls Sookie back even when she means to keep clear.

Sookie works through headache and listens. Andy Bellefleur blusters over the case and misses plenty. Arlene gossips. Tara Thornton drifts through with bruises she will not explain. The cook Sweetie Des Arts shows up on time and keeps quiet, which relieves Sookie at first. Cooks never last at Merlotte's. Sweetie seems steady. On reread that steadiness chills.

Hotshot custom shapes this stretch. Calvin leads by fairness, not fear. Felton, who bit Jason, is mean and tangled with Crystal in ways that crowd Jason out. Other panthers watch Jason for disloyalty. Sookie can catch lies in human minds, but shifter minds roar and blur. She misreads looks. She asks twice. That limit keeps her from racing ahead to answers.

Vampires and wolves pull her in

Colonel Flood, master of the Long Tooth werewolf pack from Shreveport, dies after a car strike. The pack must pick a successor. Jackson Herveaux, father of Alcide Herveaux, steps forward. Patrick Furnan, rich and ruthless, steps forward too. Alcide, the kind werewolf who helped Sookie in Mississippi, asks her to sit in on pack talks and flag lies by reading minds. Sookie owes Alcide for past care. She agrees to one meeting. It grows.

Pack talks are loud and smoky in borrowed halls. Wolves posture. Wives keep score. Sookie nurses a soda and sifts thoughts through pain. She notes Jackson's age worry and Patrick's bought confidence. Alcide hovers, trying to shield her without insulting hosts who view humans as tools. Sookie catches small deceptions and holds them until sure. Telepathy here works as nudge rather than key, tone more than transcript.

Bill Compton, Sookie's vampire ex, complicates days. He is seeing Selah Pumphrey, a realtor from Clarice, and shows it. Sookie does not want him back after blood bond and betrayal tied to his maker Lorena, but she notices. Selah stays polite and capable, not a villain, just proof Bill collects houses and dates while Sookie mops. Their talks stay stiff. Bill offers help on the shootings. Sookie declines unless forced.

Tara's trouble cuts deeper. Tara dated vampire Franklin Mott in the Jackson trip. Franklin has now handed her to his associate Mickey to settle a debt. Mickey treats human followers as property to trade and drain. Tara jokes to cover fear and will not name him at first. Sookie goes to Eric because only Eric has standing to order Mickey off. Eric agrees to free Tara, but names his price. Sookie must tell him what passed during his blank days after the witch curse, when he lived with her through Christmas. She has dodged that talk for months. She says yes for Tara. Pam watches the deal with dry amusement. She respects nerve, even in humans.

Fire and a fairy

Someone tries to burn Sookie alive at home. She wakes to smoke and heat, crawls low, and reaches the yard as glass cracks. Claudine appears, her fairy godmother, tall and bright and calm in firelight. Claudine draws her clear and stays till crews arrive. Outside lies a dead man soaked in gasoline, a Fellowship of the Sun card in his wallet. The Fellowship is the anti vampire church from prior books, loud on billboards against supes. Police read it as a failed arson by a zealot. Sookie doubts. The man's mind is gone, so she cannot check. Her house stands with back rooms charred. She sleeps at Sam's, then with friends, hating reliance.

Recovery is practical. Sookie calls insurance and boards windows. Sam, on crutches, brings cash from the safe. Jason offers to guard with a shotgun he barely handles. Alcide offers wolves for the porch. Sookie refuses wolves on her lawn. Claudine brings food and riddles about fairy limits. Claudine can step in once, not stand watch. Sookie thanks her without begging. That restraint shows growth from earlier books where she grabbed each rescue.

Sookie is shot soon after leaving the library. The round grazes her side. She drops behind a car and gets help fast. Police compare bullets. Her round matches the rounds that hit Calvin and other shifters, same rifle. Sam's round does not match. That split matters. One gun hunts shifters. A different gun hit Sam for a different reason. Sookie, stitched and sore, holds that fact close. Being in the shifter group means the shooter counts her as allied. That scares her more than stitches. She aches to breathe, cannot lift trays, sleeps upright, and works anyway because bills do not pause.

Two shooters

The sniper reveal lands in an alley. Sookie walks a shooting site with Sam in collie form, hoping his nose finds what eyes missed. Sweetie Des Arts steps out with a rifle and open hate. Sweetie says she was bitten by a werewolf months ago. The bite left her part shifter, moon touched and blood restless, in a life she did not choose. She blames all supes for that estrangement. She began killing any shifter she could find from distance, one by one. She aims at Sookie for shielding them.

Tray Dawson, a werewolf guard set by Calvin to shadow Sookie, takes a round meant for her and falls hard. Sweetie turns back on Sookie. Andy Bellefleur arrives, orders her to drop the gun, and fires when she refuses. Sweetie dies on pavement. The rifle matches the shifter shootings. Notes in her things confirm the count. Jason is cleared with Hotshot. Relief sours fast. Tray may live with a limp. A woman Sookie trusted lies dead. Calvin's folk now see Sookie as a lodestone for gunfire.

Before rest comes, the second thread snaps. Bubba, the gentle vampire who believes he is Elvis and loves cats, shuffles to Merlotte's back door with a message. Eric has been trying to reach Sookie. Someone close is a paid killer. Charles Twining drops charm and attacks, vampire fast and brutal. He says Hot Rain sent him, the maker of Longshadow, the vampire Eric killed in Dead Until Dark for feeding on live humans in Fangtasia. Eric paid restitution under vampire law. Hot Rain judged it light and wanted to take something Eric valued. Charles picked Sookie.

Charles admits the rest during the fight. He shot Sam so Sam would beg Eric for staff and Eric would send him. He torched Sookie's house and dragged a Fellowship man to the scene, pouring gasoline and planting the card to fix blame. He learned her hours behind the bar. Sookie fights with light and noise and a wooden bar tool, plus help arriving late. Eric and Sam reach her in time. Charles dies. Sookie sits on the floor in a stained shirt, shaking from shock and smoke smell.

This double answer is the best construction in the book. Two guns, two motives, no cheat on ballistics. Sweetie killed from self hate turned outward. Charles killed on orders, using her spree as cover. Clues were present. Sweetie's quiet. Charles and his questions. Sam's odd wound. My complaint is the talk after. Eric lectures on vampire law while Sookie bleeds. I wanted blankets first, bylaws later.

Pack fights and loose ends

The Long Tooth contest closes the pack thread. Jackson Herveaux and Patrick Furnan meet in trials of run and grapple and hold. Sookie attends as Alcide's guest to listen. She catches Patrick cheating in the endurance trial, taking aid where none is allowed. She reports it. Judges answer by making the final a fight till grievous injury or death. The crowd likes it too much. Sookie feels ill.

Patrick wins the final and is named packmaster. Then he kills Jackson anyway, tearing his throat as Alcide screams. Alcide shakes and swears and helps carry his father. He will not look at Patrick. Sookie stands with him and says little. Pack law permits cruelty as proof. A decent man dies for a vote among wolves. That waste will echo, but here it simply hurts.

At the same meet Sookie meets Quinn, a weretiger, large and graceful with shifting tattoos, courteous without crowding. He asks about her work and hears the answer. He offers aid if needed and steps back. Harris keeps him light, a few talks during trials, no forced romance. I welcomed that. Sookie already fields Bill circling, Eric pricing, Sam waiting, Calvin grateful, Alcide leaning. Quinn as a possible future rather than a claim feels right.

Tara's release costs blood. Eric uses standing to buy her free from Mickey, paying debt and calling favors. Mickey refuses loss. He beats Tara at her home, wounds Eric when Eric intervenes, then turns on Sookie. The fight wrecks furniture and walls. Eric kills Mickey to stop him, a kill that will carry weight because vampire kills always bill. Tara lives, shaken and shamed to need rescue. Sookie brings clothes and a charger and sits while Tara sleeps. Practical care over speeches.

In trade Sookie pays Eric in truth. She tells him about his blank Christmas, the sweetness and care, the way he asked before touching, and how she killed Debbie Pelt after Debbie tried to kill her. Eric hears her out without cutting in. Pam softens a fraction after. No hugs clear it. The debt eases enough for work to go on. I found that talk more intimate than any kiss here. Naming a tender time you know will harden in recall takes nerve.

Crowding keeps this from topping the prior book for me. A sniper hunt could fill one novel. A revenge hit could fill another. A pack vote could fill a third. Together each gets less air. Alcide asks twice for the same aid. Law gets explained twice. Sweetie's motive arrives in one speech before shots. I wanted a dropped line while she chopped onions, some hate for full moons in passing, so the turn would ache more. As is it shocks more than wounds.

Still, the parts that sing carry it. Jason's first change. Sam trusting Sookie with his bar. Calvin's tired fairness. Bubba braving dark to warn. Tara enduring with help she did not seek. Quinn entering without noise. Harris keeps Bon Temps a place where monsters shop local and neighbors bring food after fires, even fires set to settle vampire scores. Sookie holds between worlds by working and listening and refusing cheap trades. I shut the book tired for her and willing to follow. Her house stands. Her brother knows her name. After gunfire, that counts.

Content notes. Rifle violence against shifters and Sookie, with death shown. Arson and home invasion. Vampire blood drinking and coercion. Control and beating around Tara by vampires. Painful shifting into partial panther form. Parent death in pack combat and grief. Mild strong language. Past relationships discussed plainly, no explicit sex in this entry.