Deciding which books to review for my blog is usually pretty easy. If I read a book and a few days or a week later there’s still something that I’m chewing over, then I’ll likely review it. That’s how it was with Charlaine Harris’s new book, Midnight Crossroads.
Now, to preface this review, I should say that I’m a HUGE Charlaine Harris fan. I discovered her books when True Blood first came out. On my way to a Gregorian Chant retreat – a weekend of chanting the monastic hours and silence – I stopped at Barnes & Noble to pick up something for on of the kids. At the check stand, they had a display of Ms. Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries books. I knew I liked vampires, and I also knew that by the 2nd night of this retreat, I was going to need a break from the navel-gazing, so I picked up a copy of Dead Until Dark.
Changed my freakin’ life.
I read Dead Until Dark in front of this huge stone fireplace in an old Craftsman lodge, while my fellow chant-ees were watching a video about monks in Albania (or something). I finished the whole thing in one sitting and immediately started re-reading it. I stopped back at Barnes & Noble on my way home, to pick up books 2 & 3. I own all the Sookie books, most of them in hard cover, and I’ve read all the Harper Connelly books & the Lily Bard/Shakespeare books.
Loved. Them. All.
Okay, the later Sookie books might not have thrilled me as much as the first seven or eight, but still…
So I was excited to pick up a copy of Midnight Crossroads, and I was even more excited to see that one of the main characters was Manfred, the pierced and tattooed psychic from the Harper Connelly books. And I was even more & more excited to connect another main character, Bobo, with the Lily Bard books. One of Ms. Harris’s strengths as a writer is her ability to create quirky but believable minor characters, so for me the cast of Midnight Crossroads was like a chance to hang out with old friends.
It was a leisurely visit. The pacing is slow, giving readers plenty of time to get to know the eccentric cast of this paranormal-ish murder mystery. If you can buy the main premise – that a dozen or so people live in this tiny town on a crossroads in Texas – the rest of it falls into place. Every one of the characters has a secret, and the roots of the murder reach back into the Lily Bard series (which you don’t need to have read, but knowing those books added to my fun with this book). Overall Midnight Crossroads was an enjoyable experience, except for one small detail (and the rest of this post is kind of spoiler-ish, so be careful).
In Midnight Crossroads, Ms. Charlaine blends the worlds from two of her other series, which mostly worked for me. She’s done it before, though to a lesser extent, when Lily Bard (a private investigator) showed up in Dead as a Doornail to interview Sookie about Debbie Pelt’s murder. The thing that bugged me was the for all the mixing and re-purposing, she ignored the underlying premise for the Harper Connelly books.
Harper was struck by lightening as a teenager and from then on, whenever she stands on a place someone died, she flashes back to the last few seconds of their life. She and her stepbrother/husband (it’s not as icky as it looks on paper) travel around the southeast consulting on murder investigations. Manfred the psychic knows her because they’ve worked together on cases. She has her own website, fer crissake.
And though the good people of Midnight, Texas are struggling with the fall-out of a terrible crime, never once does Manfed think, “Hey, I should call my friend Harper and see if she can swing by and help us identify the murderer.” He drops Harper’s name early on, mostly to give long-time Charlaine Harris readers a little “A-ha, I thought so” moment, but he doesn’t link her skills to the situation he and the others are facing.
Harper doesn’t have to be available. She could be solving crimes in California or Frankfurt, Germany or something. The plot could still go forward as written. It just seems to me Ms. Charlaine missed an obvious connection.
I haven’t read the reviews on Amazon and don’t follow the author’s website much any more, so maybe this issue has been discussed already. It’s also possible I was asleep at the wheel for that paragraph. (But I don’t think so.) Despite my little quibble, I would still recommend Midnight Crossroads. It was fun to read about a bunch of interesting people doing entertaining things. The plot is well-constructed and the ending was satisfying. I hope she writes a sequel!
Can you think of another book that blends existing series like this? If you had the power, which two series worlds would you like to bring together?
Food for thought…
Happy Weekend!
Liv
Oh, and before I forget (like I was really going to forget), my new novella Between the Sheets came out this week. It’s getting some good reviews, and only $0.99!! Jump HERE to check it out.
