Here She Goes Again

Charlaine Harris recently wrapped up her Southern Vampire Mystery series, more famously known as “The Sookie Stackhouse” novels. In my opinion she should have done so much sooner but one can look to previous CBR reviews I’ve posted to get into that. I heard Harris started a new series in a new location and though Sookie’s world became stale and tiring, that isn’t to say Harris is incapable of having a new one that is light and fun and full of mystery.

Enter Midnight Crossroad, the first in a new “fantasy” series set in the tiny town (population 261 if the cover photo is accurate) of Midnight, Texas. Every citizen of Midnight has secrets and no one is really all that into sharing them. This respect for privacy and remoteness is what draws psychic Manfred Bernardo to the town and leads him to set up house here. We meet all of Midnight’s quirky residents and slowly learn about their abilities, secrets or interests. This is the first time I’ve ever seen Harris cross reference other series she’s written. Manfred first appeared in one of Harris’ Harper Connelly mysteries. The pawnshop owner, Bobo, mentions the town of Shakespeare and the star of her Lily Bard mysteries as well. Also in this world, people know about vampires (but they’re different than the hot ones Sookie gets to tumble with on the regular).

The central mystery takes some time to unfold here – we don’t encounter it for nearly 100 pages I think. Bobo’s ex-girlfriend, thought to have just run out on him, turns up dead from mysterious causes. We must unearth why she died and who did it. There are some red herrings, lots of amateur sleuthing, etc. There’s a talking cat, which I suppose is where we get the ‘fantasy’ element, at least for my library.

This book was easy to read but I wouldn’t really say it has the spark of early Sookie Stackhouse novels, or even the enjoyable Lily Bard mysteries. One of the main characters, Fiji, is I think supposed to be endearing but I actually found her pretty irritating. I might pick up future entries into the series but I don’t know that I’ll be at the local bookshop counter buying them up as they publish.