Guilty Pleasures is a horror/mystery novel by Laurell K. Hamilton

Laurell K. Hamilton

Laurell Kaye Hamilton is an American fantasy and romance writer. She is the author of two series of stories. Hamilton is known for her New York Times-bestselling Anita Blake series, featuring a professional zombie raiser/supernatural consultant for the police as the protagonist in a world where...

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Plot introduction

Guilty Pleasures introduces the character of Anita Blake

Anita Blake

Anita Blake is a fictional character in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series of novels by Laurell K. Hamilton. Subsequently, she has also appeared in the Dabel Brothers/Marvel Comics adaptation of her first novel, Guilty Pleasures....

, vampire hunter, and her world, an alternate history

Alternate history (fiction)

Alternate history or alternative history is a genre of fiction consisting of stories that are set in worlds in which history has diverged from the actual history of the world. It can be variously seen as a sub-genre of literary fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction; different alternate...

 where magic, vampires, werewolves and other supernatural elements exist. Blake, a zombie animator and licensed vampire executioner, investigates a series of vampire murders, and in the process comes into contact with many of the supernatural characters of her home city of Saint Louis

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

. The novel blends elements of supernatural

Supernatural fiction

Supernatural fiction is a literary genre exploiting or requiring as plot devices or themes some contradictions of the commonplace natural world and materialist assumptions about it....

 and hardboiled

Hardboiled

Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...

 detective fiction

Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...

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"Guilty Pleasures" is the name of a vampire strip club operated by vampire Jean-Claude, one of the main characters. Hamilton has continued the pattern of titling the novels after a location for most of the books in the series.