‘Danse’ covers familiar ground

“Danse Macabre”

by Laurell K. Hamilton (Berkley, 496 pages, $25.95)

For most of her fictional shelf-life – 13 years now – Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, has been a wisecracking, take-no- prisoners kind of gal.

But since being saddled with a metaphysical power called the “ardeur” (which needs a lot of sex to thrive), the only serious action Anita has seen in books like “Narcissus in Chains,” “Cerulean Sins” and “Incubus Dreams” has been between the sheets.

For longtime fans, the airy plot of Laurell K. Hamilton’s new “Danse Macabre” won’t break a lot of ground: Anita is still dealing with the growing power of the “ardeur,” but this time she must do so while surrounded by hundreds of Master Vampires from across the United States.

All of these chieftains have been invited to St. Louis by Master Vamp Jean-Claude (one of Anita’s many lovers, along with the werewolf Richard and two were-leopards, Micah and Nathaniel).

While dealing with the power machinations of all these supernatural gang lords, Anita is also dealing with the notion that she may be pregnant. This is not usually a life-shattering problem – unless the mother-to-be is a federal marshal who kills rogue vampires for a living and doesn’t know which one of the nearly dozen men she slept with is the father-to-be. (Will baby have fangs or fur?)

Furthermore, Thea, the wife of Cape Cod Master Vampire Samuel, is hinting that Anita may be turning into a succubus.

Few mainstream novelists delve so deeply into pure erotica. That Hamilton has successfully done so in such conservative times seems almost miraculous.

Perhaps like the all-but-forgotten Victorian-age classics of erotica, her books appeal to both conservative and liberal readers because they speak to secret desires – and offer a chance to live vicariously through Anita, a “Tom(asina) Jones” for the 21st century if ever there was one.