Living Dead in Dallas

Living Dead in Dallas is the second book in the Southern Vampire Mysteries by the American writer Charlaine Harris, published in 2002. It follows the telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse of Bon Temps, Louisiana.

Sookie is employed by Dallas vampires to use her telepathy in the search for one of their number who has disappeared, and the arrangement runs on a single condition: any humans found to have been involved are to be handed over to human law enforcement rather than dealt with by the vampires themselves. Before any of that, she is attacked by a beastly creature that leaves her with a painful and poisonous lashing, and the vampires draw the poison out of her veins and save her life, which is why she agrees to the favour in the first place. She is a cocktail waitress, and the work is supposed to consist of interviewing certain people who may know something about the missing vampire. The book opens with her finding the body of Lafayette in the back seat of Andy Bellefleur's car, which had been left outside Merlotte's the night before, and she learns that her friend had recently been to a local party. In Dallas she encounters the anti-vampire organisation known as the Fellowship of the Sun, and meets werewolves for the first time.

Harris built the series around a small Louisiana town and a heroine whose ability makes other people's private thoughts a practical problem, and the books mix a murder investigation with the politics of vampires who have recently made themselves public.