Dead and Gone

Dead and Gone is a novel by the American writer Charlaine Harris, published in 2009 and the ninth book of the Southern Vampire Mysteries.

The revelation that the weres and shifters exist is handled as an ordinary small-town event, which is the joke: Sam Merlotte tells his customers that he is a shifter and changes shape in the bar, most people take it in their stride, business dips and then recovers, and the one person who cannot cope is a waitress who has been going out with a member of an anti-vampire organisation. Harris uses the calm reaction to set up the violence that follows, since the murder near the bar is not a stranger's work and the town's habits of gossip and obligation make the investigation as awkward as the crime. At the same time there is a political story running above the local one, because the vampire who has taken control of Louisiana after the events of the previous book is consolidating his authority and Sookie's connections make her useful. The novel reached the top of the New York Times hardcover bestseller list.