Midnight Crossroad

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I haven't read the Sooki Stackhouse novels, and I disliked True Blood, but I sort of liked the 2017 short television series, Midnight, Texas, so I picked up this book.

It is a decent, entertaining read, slow in places and a little saccharine at times, but engrossing enough to keep me turning the pages. For those who have seen the television series, please understand that there are major plot and character departures between the show and the book. For example, Manfred and Creek are about four years younger in the book than in the series, Lem is white, we haven't seen hide nor hair of Manfred's grandma, etc. Strangely, I think these differences favor the series over the book.

It is apparent that author Charlaine Harris loves her “blink and you'll miss it small town” and its oddball characters. The characters are nice to a fault. There is Fiji, the witch, and Bobo, the pawn shop owner, and Manfred, the newcomer to town with his internet fortune telling scam, and Lem and Olivia who live in the pawn shop, and, of course, Mr. Snuggles, the talking cat, who scores the best lines in the book when he refers to Fiji, his owner, as his “feeder.” For those who have seen the series, understand that the book takes its time in developing the characters and story lines, and everyone has a storyline. It seems that the three book collection, of which Midnight Crossroads is the first, have probably been trimmed to fit in the eight episode series.

The story line of this book follows Bobo dealing with the disappearance of his fiance, the discovery of her body, efforts to solve the mystery, the unrequited romances of Manfred and Creek and Fiji and Bobo, and the intrusion of the White Supremacists who seem to think that Bobo has a legendary stockpile of weapons. The story moves along at a sedate place, but it moves along.

Harris's view of small town Texas was fairly odd. It was like a little bit of Hollywood transplanted in the parched Texas lonely, but there was a witch store selling witch stuff and giving lessons in Goddess-worship, and beauty salon run by a homosexual couple, and a diner that seemed to be doing all right. I had to wonder how these specialized businesses were staying afloat, even if the more populated town of Davey was only ten miles up the road. Harris seemed to go for “cute” in her special characters, such as Chuy and Joe walking their Pekinese dog. She also goes for strangely politically correct characters in rural Texas, for example, Fiji teaches Goddess-worship, Bobo's biggest fear is that he will be mistaken for a White Supremacist, and two of the fourteen citizens of this hamlet are gay. It's not that it couldn't happen, but all at once? In one small town? Which is not a college town near Austin?

But these are nits. The story is going for a sense of magic and it mostly accomplishes that. I liked the story and while I have not completely decided, I am inclined to get the next story.