Kitty Goes to Washington - Carrie Vaughn

Midnight radio host and semi-famous werewolf Kitty Norville likes moving from affiliate to affiliate, fielding calls from the serious and the unheard. When she’s called to a Senate hearing, to testify on behalf of supernaturals, she’s a little uncomfortable, particularly as the hearing’s going to be televised – radio’s her medium of choice for a reason. It turns out that there are other things to be concerned about in Washington, DC though – and the rather controlling vampire mistress, hot werepanther, and her mother cause not half the drama of the combined forces of an inquisitive scientist who’s not too concerned with ethics and a fundamentalist Senator hell-bent on demonising Kitty and her kin.
Only two books in I’m quite enjoying Kitty, though I could do without the play list that opens the novel. There are some particularly nice scenes where Kitty encounters other lycanthropes (a term that applies here to any shapeshifter), including the aforementioned werepanther, and an interesting theory that they have existed alongside the rest of us for millennia, with support from Aesop’s animal fables to David in the lion’s den. There’s also an interesting sub-plot about an evangelist claiming to cure vampires, which I thought echoed similar programs that ‘cure’ homosexuality, and one of my favourite takes on immortality, courtesy of Alette, the DC vampire Mistress:

I happen to believe that immortality ought to make one more sensitive to the plight of downtrodden, and more apt to work toward the betterment of humanity. Not less. We have the luxury of taking the long view.

There’s also an interesting meander around the second World War and the use of werewolves by the Nazi’s, including the intriguing fact that organised resistors to allied occupation of Germany after the war ended were called Werewolves.
There’s more, but (in line with my general procrastination of late), I read Kitty Goes to Washington several books ago, so that’s about all I have, apart from a suspicion that it may be harder to impregnate paint with a long-lasting essence of garlic than Vaughn indicates. I may well pick up Kitty Meets the Band next month, for a final whirl before Lynn and I embrace a no-library year. - Alex