Much ado has been made about "The First Death," a graphic novel two-parter chronicling the early work of Laurell K. Hamilton's alter ego, Anita Blake. Well, it turns out to be much ado about... very little. This prequel is a leaden exercise full of dull police work, vampire-slaying banter, and an empty introduction to a foppish vampire and a rather unmenacing assassin. All is rendered in halfhearted, sometimes comically silly artwork -- Hamilton should quit while she's ahead. It opens with Anita being called out on a murder scene -- children are being slaughtered by a vampire, and for some reason they need her there even though she fails to tell them anything. The only suspect is a vampire who happens to be nearby, so Sergeant Storr and Anita go to the vampire's place of work, and encounter the flirtatious Jean-Claude, who immediately takes a shine to Anita. But then another child is killed, and Anita finds that she may be dealing with a gang of vampires. Anita and her partner Manny infiltrate the vampires' base of operations, but find only a recently deceased corpse -- and when Anita returns to her office, she finds the assassin Edward, known absurdly as "Death," sitting in her chair. Despite her hatred of Edward, Anita finds that she may need his help, since she's not getting any closer to finding the serial-killing vampires. And when she discovers a lead to the case, Anit and Manny head straight into a devastating trap, from which only "Death" himself may be able to rescue them... A taut, thrilling mystery... "First Death" ain't. Laurell K. Hamilton just sort of halfheartedly slaps together a glacial, pointless plot with minimal detective work. In fact, she doesn't even bother to craft a NEW mystery -- she just embellishes a storyline that was summarized back in her first novel. Whoa, I wonder how this will turn out. Even worse, Hamilton fritters most of the storyline away -- it's a disjointed string of crime scenes, zombie raisings, inept vampire-hunting, and really bad banter ("Blow a hole in them big enough, it slows them down pretty good"). Our intrepid heroine spends most of the plot sitting in a car, an office, or a strip club, and occasionally tackling a grieving mother to the ground (to show her concern, of course). By the time we arrive at the climax, it feels like Hamilton realized that she's running out of space, and tried to cram the rest of the plot into the remaining pages. Torture, beatings and murder are glossed over in just a few pages, so it can finish on time. And all this is just so Anita can meet Jean-Claude and Edward. Jean-Claude has nothing to do with the plot at all, so he just provides ruffled shirts and high-school flirtations -- he's as sexy and dangerous as a bowl of pudding. Edward is far better -- his easygoing-killer attitude seems even more likable besides Anita's humorless tough-grrlness. He tends to get the best lines, not to mention the great scene where he toasts a house. Anita herself is a joke -- she seems more like a stunted, sulky Hot Topic teenager with too much makeup. Hamilton tries to portray her as a tough and powerful woman, but since Anita is repeatedly rescued by the Big Male Cop and Big Male Assassin, it's hard to see her that way. In fact, the most deadly thing she does in the whole story is stake a vampire who is unconscious and bound. Oooh, scary. I can see why the vampires as so frightened of her. "The First Death" is a waste of time and paper -- a halfhearted crime story wrapped around an equally halfhearted pair of introductions. Definitely not worth a read.