Review of Charlaine Harris's Midnight Crossroad

Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

Along with the azaleas, the last weeks of spring are fading away and the colder-than-usual weather has allowed me ample time to appreciate the fortunate choices on my reading list for the last three months. Soon, I'll be excitedly picking some real finds for the summer.

One of my spring picks takes place in Midnight, Texas, a town that is a cross between a dismal sere ghost town of the Old West, with tumbleweeds running the single red light and a small community from anywhere in the South. It has one of everything: one gas station, one restaurant––the Home Cookin, of course––a pawn shop and, also, the one sign that there are people who really do live here, a nail salon combined with an antique gallery.

There is a small core of people who inhabit Midnight, and when Manfred Bernardo is moving into his new digs there, a few neighbors come to help. There is Bobo, his landlord, Joe Strong from the nail salon and Fiji, the local witch. When Manfred is settled in, he realizes that despite all the camaraderie of unpacking and moving in, no one asked the expected questions like Why are you moving to such a godforsaken place? Who are you and where do you come from? This suits Manfred to a tee and he realizes he has moved to the right place.

The unusual character names may be a clue to the author's name—Charlaine Harris of Sookie Stackhouse fame. This first book in a trilogy is Midnight Crossroad (Ace Hardcover/Penguin Group (USA), May 6, 2014).

When I delved into the first chapter, some of the characters seemed familiar. Manfred Bernardo is a truly psychic young man who traveled with his grandmother Xylda, and they helped Sookie on several occasions. They also appear in the Harper Connelly Mysteries (Grave series), my favorite of all the Harris works. Bobo Winthrop is a man in his thirties; big, blond and buff who has migrated from Harris's Lily Bard stories. There may be a few other transplants popping up in the book and in the future of the series.

Manfred has come to set up shop as an Internet psychic. He doesn't get real insights over the net, but he uses a lot of psychology and a bit of gobbledygook to flesh out his predictions.

But Fiji, named after the country, has reservations about Manfred because she knows who he really is, she knows of his powers and she's afraid he will find out the secrets of those lying low in Midnight––and almost everybody here has something to conceal.

Most of the denizens of Midnight maintain certain personal boundaries that include the cliché "what happens in Midnight" etc. There are lesser-kept secrets, and one of those is about Lemuel who runs the pawnshop at night. Lemuel, who, next to Bobo, looks bleached, desiccated and shrunken only comes out at night. His skin is white as snow and he has lived here for a long, long time.

For a seemingly lifeless town, things start happening in Midnight after Manfred's arrival. The only mystery previously is the disappearance of Bobo's girlfriend, but now a body is discovered, lives are threatened, murderous plots are revealed, more people disappear and fantastical elements enter the arena. There are white supremacists, motorcycle gangs and anarchists rounding out the unrest.

There is definitely a sense of unease pervading Midnight, which Harris communicates well, but where it comes from is vague. Many questions are left unanswered. Harris reveals little about what motivates the characters to do what they do. We have yet to find out why Manfred Bernardo chose to come to Midnight, Texas, and how he even found the place. The same goes for Bobo, Lemuel and Fiji.

There doesn't seem to be a main thrust to the plot. At first I accepted Bernardo as the central character, but then the focus gently shifts to Fiji. Plenty of time is spent fleshing out the different people––and I mean different in a weirdo way. While I was expecting some supernatural elements, I was a bit disappointed because everyone kept their big guns under wraps. On the other hand, getting to know the cat makes up for that.

The quirky humor of the Sookie books doesn't appear until the last third of the book and it is at this part of the story that the pace picks up. But when all the dust settles, the impression I got from the book is that it is mostly laying the foundation for future stories in which the characters and their histories will be brought to light.

I am looking forward to that.

New Year's Unresolutions

I have been seeing flashes across the Internet suggesting that making New Year's resolutions is passé. Apparently, it's akin to hanging a sign around your neck saying "geezer." For one thing, resolutions are considered clichés and it’s better just to take life as it comes.

One life guru recommended substituting personal mantras that are less vague and have more room for flexibility. Such as: "I choose happiness" and "Today is going to be a great day." My favorite is "I will be healthy" which just gives me the mental image of some smiling innocent being dead after he gets hit by a bus.

My personal choice this year is to make some unresolutions suggested by recent reads.

Gain weight. I learned in Rick Gualtieri’s Bill the Vampire series that it's mostly good-looking thin types who are chosen to be turned into the undead. Bill is a pudgy computer nerd who wears glasses and has no luck with women at all, but he is ever hopeful when the best-looking girl he has ever seen comes on to him. Little does he know what is in store for him. But funnily enough, it is the girl (a vampire by the way) and her crew who have a shock coming. This book is hilarious and leads the way to several other vampire Bill adventures.

Don't volunteer to help others. Sookie Stackhouse, in Charlaine Harris's Dead Ever After, has made it a habit to help other people––and just consider what's been going on in her life. After everything she has done to help Eric Northman and crew, they turn a cold shoulder on her. When she is accused of a shocking murder, she finds that a girl's best friend is a dog.

Start smoking and drinking. The only way to ratchet down the building tension in Michael Gruber's Tropic of Night is to have something to do with your hands. Jimmy Paz is a Cuban-American with a gruesome murder case on his hands. A young pregnant woman has been murdered, and unspeakable things have been done to the baby. Jane Doe is an anthropologist living in the shadows under an assumed name, but she knows the real motive behind the killing. It is related to African magic and many more drastic deaths are to come. I found the book exciting and complex, with dollops of mumbo-jumbo.

Stay home instead of taking an interesting trip. In Mapuche, by Caryl Férey, there is a view of the Argentina of the present, which has flashes of all the atrocities that have gone on since the 1950s. One critic found the book riveting, horrifying and more. My view was that it showed the worst of human nature, and some of the good things, but not enough to ever compel me to visit the area. The Mapuche were indigenous to the southern South American continent. Many Argentines and Chileans have Mapuche ancestry and this was what initially drew me to the story.

Get to work late. In The Writing Class, by Jincy Willett, it seems that if Amy Gallup had just elected not to show up to teach a writing class at her local community college, her life would have been much better. Gallup was published once at 22, with critical praise, but never again.

Now her former life is gone and she is a reclusive widow, with a daily mantra of Kill Me Now. This semester's class is full of the usual writer wannabes, but it also includes one sick puppy who could be any of the students. The problems start with prank phone calls, but end in murder. Amy is shaken out her doldrums, as she uses all her skills to unmask the villain.  

Don’t take vacation days. In A Grave Waiting, Jill Downie's Detective Inspector Ed Moretti is coming back from vacation with still a few days owed him, when he gets called back to work. This is the second outing for Moretti and his partner, Detective Sgt. Liz Falla. The location is the Channel Island of Guernsey, a place at one time believed to be back of beyond. Now a center of high finance and banking because of its favorable tax laws, Guernsey has left the days of greenhouses, flowers and produce behind.

Moretti and Falla are called to a luxury yacht to look into the murder of a wealthy man. Mr. Masterson was a financier, and there's more to his murder than meets the eye. One thing that is not clear is why Masterson decided to come to the island in the first place and, secondly, who of the many people who had motives to kill him did the deed. The detective duo makes an excellent partnership, and the plot of the story is engrossing.

Don’t make appointments with doctors who are going to tell you what you don't want to hear, most important considering Unresolutions #1 and #3. Max Tyger, a PI and part-time adjunct college professor in Darlington, Connecticut, went to the doctor because he had trouble choking on food and the diagnosis he got was hard to swallow––esophageal cancer, which required both chemotherapy and radiation.

In This One Day, by K. A. Delaney, Max is at this low point in his life that includes a lack of health insurance and the loss of his girlfriend Helen, which he attributes to a birth defect—his lousy personality. But Helen comes to him with the case of a high school boy who has disappeared. The art teacher at a prestigious private school wants to hire him to find the boy, even though his parents have not reported him missing.

Fighting fatigue, desperation and loss of dignity, Max takes the case primarily because he owes reparation to a boy from one of his college courses whom he could have helped if he had recognized there was a problem sooner. The loss of this boy haunts him. He wants to take the advice from another chemo partner to live just one day and try to do something good during the course of it.

Avoid having fun. Vish Puri, a most private investigator, solves The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing, by Tarquin Hall. An Indian scientist, well known as a debunker who exposes fraudulent gurus, is somehow murdered by a manifestation of the goddess Kali when she plunges a sword into his chest. Puri is more clear-sighted than the other investigators, and he and his team of undercover operatives—Facecream, Tubelight, and Flush—will not stop until they know how the magic was performed.

Read books with cute punning titles. Since I usually avoid these books, I thought it would make a change for me and I do enjoy series, so Rosemary and Crime (Piper Prescott series, Book 1) by Gail Oust fit the bill. Piper Prescott, a recent divorcée estranged from her youngest daughter, is adding some spice to her life by opening her own business in a small town in Georgia. Spice it Up! as it is called, is prepared for its opening day until a star attraction, a chef with a maniacal temper, is murdered.

Since Piper is finding herself in the frame, she takes the investigation into her own hands. Naturally, the killer decides that Piper is in the way and opts to eliminate her as well. Even after a few near-death experiences that might have been avoided with the use of a cell phone near at hand, Piper continues to leave hers here and there, mostly uncharged as well. This unresolution may be stricken from my list.

A Horse Race

As I watched Oxbow run away with the Preakness Stakes on Saturday afternoon, I mused how my reading resembles a horse race. I pick up several books at once and rank them on their pedigree, which includes past novels by the same author, recommendations from online friends, and finally what they look like. I often put my money on a flashy outsider and occasionally regret my choice. I read a bit from each of them and then pick one to settle into and the race is on. If my attention wanders, I fall on one of the others in the pack.

Oxbow at the Preakness

Sometimes the first one grabs me and it is a leader from start to finish just like Oxbow in Baltimore.

One such winner was Chris Grabenstein's latest, Free Fall, which was first out of the gate. The story opens in early June at a beach resort on the coast of New Jersey, which is getting itself together after superstorm Sandy. Sea Haven, home to its police department's dynamic duo John Ceepak and his partner Danny Boyle, has taken eight months to pull back from the brink.

Danny, who once thought of Sandy only as one of his favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, has had a few other things torn asunder. After a mayoral election, Danny found himself gifted with a new partner, Sal Santucci, who thinks of nothing but food, and Danny has found himself the "Keeper of The Code" of police conduct.

There is nothing worse for policemen in small towns than to be called to a scene of a fight to hear an old friend disclaim, "I didn’t do anything!" On this particular occasion, the friend, Christine, was a close friend of Danny's late, greatly-lamented love. This turns out to be a she-said/she-said situation, but before long, Christine is embroiled in a worst-case scenario involving murder.

After this battered seaside vacationland reclaimed some of its amusement rides from the surf, one of the rides has been transformed with new lights, sound effects, paint job and a new operator: Joe Ceepak, John's father, who has ridden into town to harass his son and former wife. The ride's name is the Free Fall. Freefall rides have three distinct parts: a ride to the top of a tall tower, a momentary suspension and then a downward plunge.

The ride is actually a metaphor for the mystery. The story gathers momentum, as John Ceepak and Boyle are reunited to investigate the murder, while simultaneously try to keep the reins on old Joe Ceepak. Joe's ex-wife has come into some money. Joe feels he is entitled to some of this legacy and is willing to go to extreme lengths to accomplish this––even kill someone, if he can stay off the sauce long enough. Ceepak the younger has his hands full.

But nothing is going to stop the inevitable free fall, because events are moving along like a force of nature and Danny is called upon to use all his skills to prevent disaster. The story crosses the finish line with intensity.

Sometimes, one of my reading choices tends to get stuck in the middle of the pack and gets a lot of dirt on its face. Somewhat like Orb actually. Orb came to the Preakness with a great track record, having won the Run for the Roses a few weeks ago. Similarly, Charlaine Harris has a tremendous record with several very successful series under her belt. Dead Ever After is the last of the Sookie Stackhouse series and, as such, came with tremendous expectations. Some fans also follow the TV series, True Blood, and they have their own set of expectations.

In Dead Ever After, Sookie is coming off a great battle involving many supernatural forces, at the end of which she had to make a crucial decision about whom to protect. Her final choice is not a popular one; many think she backed the wrong horse, and the story begins with Sookie down in the dumps because she seems to have alienated her vampire husband Eric, her partner Sam, and her witch friend Amelia.

When an ex-friend Arlene comes around to Sookie's workplace, Merlotte's, asking for a job, she gets turned down flat, but before the next day dawns Arlene is dead and Sookie is suspected of murder. In this finale, all of the people and creatures Sookie has helped in the past are spurred on to help her clear her name.

One of the main themes of the series is the jockeying for position in the race for Sookie's heart by several suitors. Eric, Sam, Alcide, Quinn and Bill have all been in the running at one time or another and if my odds-on favorite seems to lag behind, I can't use that as a criticism of the work. The main hurdle for me was a dark-horse evil power that has entered the field to keep Sookie from going the distance. I am not sure why I could swallow the vampire idea and then cavil at other influences, but I did. Go figure.

At the wire, all the loose ends were reined in but I was saddled with a bit of sorrow over the demise of a great series.

Then there are those books that seem to start slowly, like Secretariat used to do, and I go back to them several times before they get into their stride and surpass all others in the pack. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin was like this.

Slow out of the starting gate, the story ambles along as two men are introduced. One is Larry, the son of a white small landowner in rural Chabot, Mississippi, who spends his childhood trying to be a help to his father. Larry's father rejects him most of the time, so Larry loses himself in books and horror stories. As an adult, he is a shunned outcast because he is presumed to be responsible for the disappearance of a girl he had his only date with.

Secretariat at Belmont

Silas is a transplant from Chicago, coming back to this small southern town with his African-American mother to a place that was familiar to her. They are dirt poor, but Silas finds a way to be successful in school because of his athletic ability. Later on, he returns to Chabot as a constable and he is remembered fondly by his sobriquet "32." Silas has not seen Larry in years, and makes no attempt to meet him until now, when he calls in a professional capacity. Now, another girl is missing.

"Scary" Larry is slowly atrophying from lack of human interaction, so when an intruder shoots him he is ready to die. Silas doesn't want to come a cropper in this case, because he wonders if he had been unfair to Larry when he was too busy to answer urgent phone calls.

Once, though, these boys were friends, albeit secretly. In this time and in this place, comradeship between the races was verboten. Silas was the one boy who really knew Larry, but now he lives with decisions he made long ago.

This is a story that does not have a predictable outcome. It is filled with flawed characters who seem to be surrounded with sadness. But then the plot picks up speed and once Franklin delves into this duo's shared history and shared secrets, the novel catches fire and down the stretch it goes. Filled with lyrical prose that is almost poetic made reading this book a memorable experience.

Note: I could not have written these reviews without the help of sports metaphors.

Ah, Not-So-Sweet Mystery of Life

If you're reading this, we don't have to tell you that the mystery genre has been a hit from the beginning and seems to gain in popularity all the time. There's a lot of theorizing out there about why mysteries are so popular. Most of the theories are pretty high-falutin' stuff. The real reason might be simpler; like that book mysteries are so much better than the many other mysteries we have to deal with every day.

Georgette Spelvin: I'll go along with this reasoning, because the last time I tried to invoke Freud and Jung to explain why mystery reading is so addicting, you asked me what I'd been smoking, Sister.

Sister Mary Murderous: In real life, men are mysterious to women and women are mysterious to men. But on a day-to-day basis, the man/woman mysteries can be pretty pedestrian. Like: Why can't my husband find anything in the refrigerator or figure out where half the stuff goes when we unload the dishwasher? To be fair, I should talk about the things he finds inexplicable about me. But, hey, it's my blog and who says I have to be fair?

Georgette Spelvin: Not I. Life isn't fair. Just read any book of crime fiction to discover an innocent decision that leads to Big Trouble. Simply renting a place to live is disastrous in Ruth Rendell's A Demon in My View and Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase. The decision to eat a chocolate brings death in Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case. I guess you could call this a sweet mystery of death.

Maltese Condor: Ah, sweet mystery of life! I believe, according to Bing Crosby in the song of the same name, the main mystery is falling in love. Carl Sandburg, who wrote, in his poem, Explanations of Love, "There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming is a mystery" would agree with Bing. Your mysteries are more tangible, Sister.

Sister Mary Murderous: If you're a parent, you know all about cracking alibis, following a trail and ultimately solving the crime. But, let's face it, the kids aren't exactly criminal masterminds, so breaking their alibis doesn't take a super-sleuth. Following a trail isn't too tough either, since it's usually made up of mucky footmarks and sticky fingerprints. The only real challenge is subjecting the convicted culprit to a punishment that (a) is inventive, (b) is effective, and (c) isn't so inventive and effective that child protective services gets involved.

Maltese Condor: Peter Robinson's Close To Home tells the story of the deaths of two 15-year-old boys, decades apart. The cases would have been much easier to solve if the water hadn't been muddied by the fact that at least in one case, other boys––rascals and scamps, the bunch of them––hadn't felt that there were some things they couldn't tell their parents, such as playing hooky and problems with dirty old men. One of the scamps, Alan Banks, learned the value of the truth in his later years as a CID Inspector. Frankly, some parents tend to down-pedal much of what of their offspring tell them about their activities.

Georgette Spelvin: Yes, some parents are guilty of doing that. Then there are some parents who usher their kids into criminal behavior. We all remember Mario Puzo's The Godfather. Maybe you haven't read the hilarious "coming-of-legal-incarceration-age" story narrated by Luke Fulmer in Dallas Hudgens's Drive Like Hell, in which the 10-year-old Luke meets his dad Lyndell for the first time when he shows up in Luke's bedroom in the middle of the night. A few hours later, Luke is crawling through the doggie door of an auto supplies store to steal a distributor cap and an oil filter at Lyndell's request and driving the car while Lyndell rides shotgun "with a Kool snagged in his teeth and a pint of Motlow between his legs." I wasn't raised in the South by redneck parents like Luke, but I felt I was tagging along with Luke while I read this fabulous book.

Della Streetwise: Here's another guy who was born to bend the law. Nick Harkaway's Joe Spork is the son of a London gangster and holds down a job as an antique clocks restorer. While working on a decades-old mechanism for an old intelligence agent, he activates a doomsday device from the Cold War days. This sets off a race to nab it by individuals and organizations of all stripes. Joe decides not to cower behind the aspidistra. It's no mystery that Harkaway is John le Carré's son. His brand-new book, Angelmaker, is an exhilarating and funny chase between many spies and I loved it.

Currently I'm reading Fannie Flagg's Standing in the Rainbow. Thanks for the intro to this author, Sister MM. How I got along without reading her is a mystery to me.

Georgette Spelvin: Right now, I'm accompanying Minnesota Det. Sarah Pribek as she searches for her missing husband in Jodi Compton's terrific The 37th Hour.

Sister Mary Murderous: While your book sleuth is out and about, interviewing witnesses and suspects, we're at home, pursuing our own mysteries. Instead of a missing-persons case, we're tracking down the ever-elusive socks that disappear from the laundry. For those of us over 40, we're in hot pursuit of our reading glasses. (Hint: Try the top of your head.)

Maltese Condor: I am reminded of the series about the Peculiar Crimes Unit, featuring aging detectives John May and Arthur Bryant, who won't hang up their hats. They can find solutions to the most complex puzzling crimes, but one of them (I can't remember which!) can't ever find his glasses.

As far as I know, the mystery of the lost socks has been solved. Jerry Seinfeld has revealed that these are not losses but, rather, well-coordinated escapes, planned while in the paired state. Many a sock marriage has gone down the tubes and I won't go into incompatibility, because that is a sock of a different stripe.

Georgette Spelvin: My family members could mystify competitively. I mean, how can a kid's usual good sense develop the hiccups, allowing initials to be carved into the door of a brand-new car, or a twig to be employed as a pick-lock to completely jam a locked front door? But it's inanimate objects that really make me shake my head. How is it that inanimate objects sniff out occasions when you're vulnerable? Like:

• The spilled glass of milk that lands, not on the floor, but on the back of your dog, so he can run madly all over the house, shaking himself and rolling on the carpet;
• The paper cup of coffee that explodes all over your shirt-front as you're getting up to speak to a room full of people; and
• The house door that locks itself at 6:00 a.m., when you're outside in the dark, dragging the garbage can to the curb, dressed in your rattiest pajamas and your husband's hiking boots––and, of course, not carrying keys or a cellphone.

Sister Mary Murderous: On the home front, we use forensic investigation techniques, but they involve things like trying to figure out what's in that Tupperware bowl under the green fuzz, whether that smell means the leftover Chinese food is no good anymore or if that shirt can be worn again before it's laundered.

Periphera: What is that disturbing sticky crud that forms on the bottom of dining tables? Lunching at a restaurant, I accidentally brushed the underside of a very clean-looking table and immediately had to go wash my hands. Came home and crawled around wiping furniture from the underside.

Sister Mary Murderous: And then there are puzzle mysteries. I love puzzle mysteries. The book has maps, a limited universe of suspects, timetables, alibis, witness statements and the like, and if you put your mind to it, you can actually figure whodunnit, how, where and when. But in real life, you just get to solve the puzzle of how you can get to work, run your errands, make your meetings and appointments and other obligations on time and still maybe have some time for yourself at the end of the day.

Maltese Condor: Parnell Hall has a bunch of mysteries relating to actual puzzles. He's also well-known for his YouTube musical diatribe about the mysteries of the publishing world.

Crosswords are supposed to make you smarter and ward off Alzheimer's disease, but sudoku puzzles just make me feel like an idiot who still has problems with the numbers one to nine.

Sister Mary Murderous: Another problem with the mysteries of life is that unlike books, there is no solution. There is no point even pursuing questions like:*

• Why does my spouse think we have to clean the house before the cleaners get here?
• Why am I always having to tell Joe in Accounting, "My eyes are up here, Joe"?
• How come my appliance/vehicle falls apart just after the warranty runs out?
• Speaking of cars, you know the trouble signals that show you pictograms intended to alert you that your washer fluid is low, your headlight is out, you need oil, or whatever? Why do they look nothing like what they're supposed to be signaling? They all look like they're trying to warn of an alien invasion or an oil rig explosion.
• How is it possible that I have 500 TV channels but nothing to watch?
• Am I turning into my mother?



Dick Vitale

• When we have company, how does the cat immediately choose the one cat-hater in the crowd to get all friendly with?
• At golf tournaments, why are there so many idiots who scream "Get in the hole!" as soon as the golfer's club hits the ball––even when the guy is teeing off a 600-yard par-5 hole?
• Does anybody think Dick Vitale is a good, interesting or even bearable sports announcer? 
• The Kardashians. Why? And here's a sports/reality TV crossover mystery: What the heck is up with Bruce Jenner's face?

* Not that any of these questions are ones I've ever pondered personally!

Maltese Condor: I can sympathize with anyone who wants to clean up before the cleaners come in, because they might have house cleaner like sharp-eyed Lily Bard, from Charlaine Harris's series in the not-so-sleepy little town of Shakespeare, Arkansas. 

Or how about sharp-tongued Blanche White, from Barbara Neely's excellent series about a middle-aged domestic worker? Blanche is a women who's had bad times and, in Blanche On the Lam, we find her under suspicion for murder. Fortunately, she's in a great position to ferret out the clues she needs to find the true culprit.

Georgette Spelvin: MC, your talk about being in a great position for ferreting out clues reminds me of Ray Milland in The Big Clock, a noir movie based on the 1946 book by Kenneth Fearing. Or how about James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window? In that movie, Stewart is confined to a wheelchair, and he's in a uniquely good position for spying on his neighbors. The first time I saw it, it scared the daylights out of me because Raymond Burr is so darned creepy. Watching it still makes getting to sleep later a mysterious process.

Sister, we're making a rule that there's to be no more mention of the Kardashians on Read Me Deadly Ever Again.

The Material Witnesses: Got any imponderable mysteries of life to lay on us?