A Touch
of Dead
Charlaine
Harris
Summary (from the book jacket)
Published 2009 - 192 pages
For the first time ever
collected into a single edition, A Touch of Dead contains all of the Sookie
Stackhouse short stories that have been published in other books and
anthologies over the years. A Touch of Dead contains: Fairy Dust, Dracula
Night, One word Answer, Lucky and Gift Wrap.
In “Fairy Dust” Sookie
finds her mind-reading talents in demand when a fairy from a set of triplets
gets dusted. “Dracula Night” may be the commemoration of the Prince of
Darkness’s birth, but it Sookie who gets a tasty-looking present.
Learning that her cousin is
dead is shocking enough for Sookie. Learning that her cousin was a vampire who
got staked leaves her speechless in “One Word Answer.” When Sookie teams up
with her witchy friend Amelia to discover who has it out for Bon Temps’s most
successful insurance agent, they get “Lucky.” A solo Sookie has the holiday
blues in “Gift Wrap,” until she has an unexpected encounter with someone who
has bigger problems than loneliness.
The
Review
A Touch of Dead is a rather
nicely packaged collection of five fairly short Sookie Stackhouse stories. I
say nicely packaged because this hardback volume has another charming cover
illustration by Lisa Desimini, who illustrated the covers of all the original
versions of the books in the Sookie Stackhouse series, and also contains a
number of other original black and white illustrations by the same artist
between its covers. The pages of the book are printed on thick bright white
paper, again adding to the quality feel of this volume. Its almost like the
publisher is trying to make up for the scanty written contents of the book by
creating a physical object that feels like it is worth the hefty $24 cover
price of this story collection.
Cover design judgements are
always fairly subjective. Personally I love the whimsical covers of the
original Sookie books and felt that I wanted this book in hardback for my
collection because they all look so lovely on my “keeper” book shelf. But if
you are less of a collector, and more of a reader, then you might want to think
twice about whether you want to purchase this overpriced item.
The stories contained in A
Touch of Dead have all been published before in other anthologies, so there is
a chance that the avid Sookie reader will have already read some, if not all,
of these tales. An introduction to the collection from Charlaine Harris helps
to put each story into chronological order - which is helpful when it comes to
trying to work out where characters and storylines fit into the Sookie series
as a whole. The events in “Fairy Dust”, the earliest story in chronological
terms, occur after Dead To The World. The events in “Gift Wrap”, the latest
story, take place before Dead and Gone.
So what do readers get in A
Touch of Dead? “Fairy Dust” (originally published in Powers of Detection) is a
story about Sookie using her mind reading powers to help the fairy triplets
Claude, Claudine and Claudette solve a crime. “Dracula Night” (originally
published in Many Bloody Returns) is the story of what happens when Eric throws
a big party at Fangtasia to celebrate the birthday of legendary vampire, Prince
Dracula.
“One Word Answer”
(originally from Bite) is the story of how Sookie finds out that her cousin
Hadley is dead. This story introduced the whole Hadley was a vampire and a
consort of the Queen storyline that was continued in the full length Sookie
novels, so it is worth reading for that alone. “Lucky” (originally from Unusual
Suspects) is an enjoyable mystery story where Amelia and Sookie use their
powers to investigate break-ins at their insurance agent’s office.
“Gift Wrap” (originally
from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe) is a story about how Sookie aids an injured
werewolf on Christmas Eve. This is a great Christmas story. It has a warm
Christmas theme without going overboard on seasonal cheer and
good-will-to-all-men, which is usually the first thing to put me off Christmas
stories…
All of the stories are
fairly average compared to Charlaine Harris’s full length Sookie books but its
worth remembering that Charlaine Harris’s average writing is better than a lot
of author’s good…
All in all, it’s hard to
rate A Touch of Dead. All the stories are entertaining and funny but whether they
are worth the steep cover price of this volume is difficult to say. Its worth
noting that Charlaine Harris is continuing to write new Sookie short stories so
when you purchase A Touch of Dead you haven’t even purchased the complete
collection of the Sookie shorts. Collectors will probably snap this book up but
readers might want to wait for the paperback edition or borrow it from the
library.
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