It was incredible.
This book, however, is not.
Anita's liason with the FBI is Special Agent Chester Fox. I find this name to be hilarious.
Fox offers his concerns to Larry's family, and then states that he doesn't want Anita in his territory. She kills too many people for him to be comfortable"
“You’re coming here to raise the dead, Marshal, not execute anyone. Is that clear?”
Now I was getting pissed. “I don’t kill people for the hell of it, Special Agent Fox.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard.” His voice was quiet.
“Don’t believe all the rumors you hear, Fox.”The problem with this is that the book contradicts this over and over and over and over AND FUCKING OVER again. The Anita Blake series wants to have a murderous bad-ass main character AND to keep her virginal white and pure. This is the only series I've read that desperately tries to have a virginal orgy every other chapter. And you know what? If LKH had played this scene as if Anita actually was a blood-thirsty killer and not, you know, Miss Misunderstood, this would actually be a cool interplay between a cop doing his job--letting the scary killer know he'll kick her ass if she tries any shit in his town--and the scary killer trying to placiate the cop because she understands what both their jobs are and how they conflict, but she also kind of needs to do her job now. But by playing it like Anita is misunderstood, instead of having a conversation between equals we've got banter between an asshole and a hypocrite, and that's not interesting.
Anita gets pissed that Fox is calling her on her shit (And if there is an agent with any variation of Dana or Diana in the name I'm going to punch something) and threatens to just not come at all, thus putting the entire case in jeopardy. Yep, that's good behavior out of a law enforcement person. "You play the game my way or your killer gets to walk. Fuck Joe Average, he can die, but I want you to respect my callous ass."
“You have worked some rough shit. I’ll grant that, Marshal Blake.” He sighed again. “But you’ve got a reputation for killing first and asking questions later. As for rumors, you’re right— they don’t paint a very flattering picture of you.”
“You might bear in mind, Fox, that any man you’ve heard dirty stories about me from didn’t get to fuck me.”OH WHAT THE FUCKING HELL ANITA? I cannot express the amount of god-awful whiplash that last part gave me. NOBODY brought up fucking before now. Fox is concerned about how Anita tends to kill things before she asks questions. Which she does. It fucked her hard on the book, because maybe if she'd taken three seconds to ask questions the bad guy wouldn't have gotten off scot-free the way he did. Anita does not always wait for warrents to go through, which is how you kill a case, Anita does not always take proper precautions before going onto a crime scene, which is how you murder a case, and Anita does not play nice with anybody, which means you can kiss quite a few wittnesses bye bye. And Anita is the one who decides to make it be about sex.
She's also implying that she screws her critics to keep them quiet.
But because this is not real life, instead of going "We're finding someone else" and hanging up the phone, Fox and Anita start discussing who her disgruntled not-a-lover could possibly be. UH GUYS. THERE IS AN AUDIENCE HERE. WE'D KIND OF LIKE TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCKING CASE IS? YOU KNOW. THE KICK OFF TO THE PLOT. IT'S KIND OF IMPORTANT.
Nope. We're reading about Anita's trip to New Mexico. Apparently a cop quoted the Exodus "Suffer not a witch to live" verse at her and she kissed him. Yeah, because the best way to follow up religious intolerance is with sexual harassment. EVERYBODY IN THIS BOOK IS TERRIBLE.
And of course this story makes Fox laugh and he's all buddy buddy with Anita now. So the key to the guy kingdom is sexy stories about harrassing people. Nice to know.
I knew what he was referring to. “We hugged each other, Agent Fox, because after seeing what was in that house I think we both needed to touch something warm and alive. I let one man hold my hand and all the other men think I’m fucking him. God, there are times when I really hate being the only woman around this kind of shit.”WOW. Just fucking WOW. ANITA IS THE ONLY WOMAN IN LAW ENFORCEMENT WHO HAS EVER HAD TO DEAL WITH SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND BACKBITING. THAT IS SO GOOD TO KNOW.
The chapter ends with a few paragraphs on Anita's clothes (and how skirts and heels get you more help with luggage) and Micah's conservative-but-not-flashy-suit-with-the-silk-shirt and THIS IS NOT A FASHION BOOK PLEASE STOP RAIDING JARETH'S WARDROBE ALREADY...and Anita having anxiety over somebody from New Mexico bad-mouthing her, which is legit. It's a shitty thing to do. It'd have more weight if Anita hadn't shit all over both her critics and her mundane friends over and over again, but doing shitty things to shitty people doesn't make being shitty okay.
End of chapter.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you had a good time at the con!
A lot of scenes could actually be so much cooler if LKH just played them differently.
Well, of course he must mean they said they fucked her, what other complaints could anyone ever have about Anita as a cop? *sarcasm*
I suddenly remember this one!
ReplyDelete....Aw crap.
Wait, was I supposed to be angry that Fox was calling Anita on her shit? Because I was actually glad that her bad behavior was finally coming back to bite her in the ass.
ReplyDeleteBut wait, this is an Anita Blake book, so she never has to face the consequences of her actions.
Also, I refuse to believe that the only people qualified to raise this guy are in St. Louis. There has to be someone closer to Philadelphia. Is there no one on the entire east coast the feds could call?
And don't tell me it's because she's the only member of a federal law enforcement agency who can raise the dead. If the fucking St. Louis PD can afford to hire a witch, the FBI should have a whole task force specifically for this kind of thing.