Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris (Midnight Texas #1)

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...

With the end of the Sookie Stackhouse series, Charlaine Harris has created a new world (I think a lot of people may have forgotten / never realised that Charlaine Harris has written three other series of books), the world of Midnight, Texas. In this small town story she has given us a cast of characters that are extremely different from each other, albeit for the fact that they may all be hiding secrets, which may slowly be revealed during this and future novels in the series. Yet for all their differences this is a close-knit community who look after each other.

I haven’t read all of Charlaine Harris’s other series, but I was very happy to see that one of the main characters to recently move to Midnight was one Manfred Bernardo, a bit-part character in the Harper Connelly novels who finally seems to be coming into his own. The book itself is written in the third person, which means that the chapters change from one character’s perspective to another and I found this a really interesting choice as previously Charlaine Harris has written first person narratives. This choice gives the book a broader scope as we can find out characters motivations, which may not always be clear from a singular perspective.

As already mentioned Manfred Bernardo is the new boy in town, and in this story the other two main characters seem to be Fiji, the local witch and Bobo Winthrop, who some of you may recognise from the Lily Bard series. It is interesting just how quickly Manfred is accepted into the town and just how slowly but surely we are able to peel away the everyday to get into the mysteries surrounding the town and the people who live there.

As this is a Charlaine Harris novel I can’t get away from mentioning that there is a resident vampire named Lemuel although he is not your typical Bon Temps vampire. Those characters mentioned are just a few of the characters that live in Midnight, but however small it is I can’t mention everyone who lives there, even though I wish I could as they are all so vivid, and you can tell there is much hidden beneath the surface.

So welcome to Midnight where nothing is what it seems and not knowing everything about your neighbours may end up getting you killed. I enjoy this kind of story, a mystery/crime/thriller/urban fantasy novel, there is something for everyone here and enough loose ends to keep you intrigued to find out what could happen next. If you have read anything by Charlaine Harris I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed. If you haven’t read anything by Charlaine Harris, then Midnight Crossroad might be the book to get you started.

Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris
315 pages
Gollancz (8 May 2014)

9/10 A mystery/crime/thriller/urban fantasy novel with something for everyone.