Dead as a Doornail

Book five in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris is entitled Dead as a Doornail. This novel starts with a series of attacks on shapeshifters and weres. The police don’t know what to do with this because to them it appears to be a serial killer choosing victims with no apparent link. Eric loans Sam his bartender, the vampire Charles, and Sookie gets dragged into Shreveport pack politics by Alcide.

Calvin Norris, the packmaster of Hotshot, is one of the wounded and Jason is the suspect favored by the Hotshot pack. Which complicates Jason’s fledgling relationship with Crystal Norris. Add to this mix the usual tension between Bill, Eric, and Sookie. Due to these factors this entry in the series revolves more around relationships than perhaps any other novel yet.

To me this book feels like filler. Lots of action happened in Dead to the World so maybe this just feels like a letdown from that. However, a lot of the main plot is actually reaction to things that happened in Dead Until Dark (book 1) and also involves actions throughout the timeline. I also get the sense that quite a few new storylines are being set up in this novel.

Despite the fact that logically I know that at some point plot lines have to be tied up and new ones introduced, I still can’t help but feel that this could have been handled a bit more organically. Dead as a Doornail really feels like it could have been interspersed throughout other novels without any loss to the reader. This is definitely the weakest entry yet in the series. I give it a 3/5.