Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris Series: Midnight Texas #1
Published by Ace on May 6, 2014
Genres: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 305
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I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It’s a pretty standard dried-up western town.
There’s a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There’s a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there’s new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he’s found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).
Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth...
It has been a really long time since I have read a Charlaine Harris book. I did not like the way the last Sookie Stackhouse went, and let’s just say I was a little resentful. It was the author’s view of the ending, so that is how it had to end. Didn’t mean I had to like it. So, I have not gone back and read anything else until now.
Midnight Crossroad is the first book in a new series, Midnight, Texas. Once again we are in a small town setting with citizens hiding all kinds of different things. Manfred is new in town and this is the perfect place for him. Manfred is a crossover character from Harris’s other series, including a short where he met Sookie. He has his own reasons for being in a town where everyone knows everyone, but also allows others to just keep their secrets and let each other be.
I can’t remember if Sookie read the same way, but I had a terrible time getting into the narrative of this book. I’m not the best at figuring out points of view. I felt like I was in a scene, like a Manfred scene, and I wasn’t really hearing his thoughts or emotions, but more like I was just observing Manfred. The more the story went on, the more used to it I got, but it was something I had a hard time getting past.
The characters are all very interesting and the little tidbits you get from them keep you wondering what they are really about. I have to mention the character names. I’m not sure if there was something behind the character naming, but I had a hard time taking Bobo seriously when all I could think of was a clown!
The mystery does build, which is even harder to solve because we really don’t know these characters well. It builds and I am really interested in how the whole town dynamics work, even with all the differing opinions on the crime. It could have been anybody. This is where I think the narrative did help the story. I did enjoy the brain stumper and the surprise ending.
I think I will enjoy Day Shift even more now that I’m more familiar with the characters and the narrative. Charlaine Harris fans who enjoy the small town feel will likely enjoy this book.
About Charlaine Harris
Charlaine Harris has been a published novelist for over twenty-five years. A native of the Mississippi Delta, she grew up in the middle of a cotton field. Now she lives in southern Arkansas with her husband, her three children, three dogs, and a duck. The duck stays outside.
Though her early output consisted largely of ghost stories, by the time she hit college (Rhodes, in Memphis) Charlaine was writing poetry and plays. After holding down some low-level jobs, she had the opportunity to stay home and write, and the resulting two stand-alones were published by Houghton Mifflin. After a child-producing sabbatical, Charlaine latched on to the trend of writing mystery series, and soon had her own traditional books about a Georgia librarian, Aurora Teagarden. Her first Teagarden, Real Murders, garnered an Agatha nomination.
Soon Charlaine was looking for another challenge, and the result was the much darker Lily Bard series. The books, set in Shakespeare, Arkansas, feature a heroine who has survived a terrible attack and is learning to live with its consequences.
When Charlaine began to realize that neither of those series was ever going to set the literary world on fire, she regrouped and decided to write the book she’d always wanted to write. Not a traditional mystery, nor yet pure science fiction or romance, Dead Until Dark broke genre boundaries to appeal to a wide audience of people who just enjoy a good adventure. Each subsequent book about Sookie Stackhouse, telepathic Louisiana barmaid and friend to vampires, werewolves, and various other odd creatures, has drawn more readers. The Southern Vampire books are published in Japan, Great Britain, Greece, Germany, Thailand, Spain, France, and Russia.
In addition to Sookie, Charlaine has another heroine with a strange ability. Harper Connelly, lightning-struck and strange, can find corpses… and that’s how she makes her living.
In addition to her work as a writer, Charlaine is the past senior warden of St. James Episcopal Church, a board member of Mystery Writers of America, a past board member of Sisters in Crime, a member of the American Crime Writers League, and past president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance. She spends her "spare" time reading, watching her daughter play sports, traveling, and going to the movies.
About Charlaine Harris
Charlaine Harris has been a published novelist for over twenty-five years. A native of the Mississippi Delta, she grew up in the middle of a cotton field. Now she lives in southern Arkansas with her husband, her three children, three dogs, and a duck. The duck stays outside.
Though her early output consisted largely of ghost stories, by the time she hit college (Rhodes, in Memphis) Charlaine was writing poetry and plays. After holding down some low-level jobs, she had the opportunity to stay home and write, and the resulting two stand-alones were published by Houghton Mifflin. After a child-producing sabbatical, Charlaine latched on to the trend of writing mystery series, and soon had her own traditional books about a Georgia librarian, Aurora Teagarden. Her first Teagarden, Real Murders, garnered an Agatha nomination.
Soon Charlaine was looking for another challenge, and the result was the much darker Lily Bard series. The books, set in Shakespeare, Arkansas, feature a heroine who has survived a terrible attack and is learning to live with its consequences.
When Charlaine began to realize that neither of those series was ever going to set the literary world on fire, she regrouped and decided to write the book she’d always wanted to write. Not a traditional mystery, nor yet pure science fiction or romance, Dead Until Dark broke genre boundaries to appeal to a wide audience of people who just enjoy a good adventure. Each subsequent book about Sookie Stackhouse, telepathic Louisiana barmaid and friend to vampires, werewolves, and various other odd creatures, has drawn more readers. The Southern Vampire books are published in Japan, Great Britain, Greece, Germany, Thailand, Spain, France, and Russia.
In addition to Sookie, Charlaine has another heroine with a strange ability. Harper Connelly, lightning-struck and strange, can find corpses… and that’s how she makes her living.
In addition to her work as a writer, Charlaine is the past senior warden of St. James Episcopal Church, a board member of Mystery Writers of America, a past board member of Sisters in Crime, a member of the American Crime Writers League, and past president of the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance. She spends her “spare” time reading, watching her daughter play sports, traveling, and going to the movies.
