Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

Midnight is a town that doesn't even have one horse, and you just know there isn't even a blinking stoplight at that crossroads.  It is just that small.  Unfortunately, considering the denizens of the town you would have thought that they and the story would be larger than life but no, everything is small and contained and sadly quite pedestrian.  My judgement may have been coloured by the TV Series, I caught that on catch up here in the UK and it was truly bingeworthy and led me to buy the books - to be honest I wish I'd just stuck with the TV show.

There's nothing wrong with the book per se, it just all feels so slow and small.  Each character felt so flat and lifeless after their small screen counterparts had been met.  Lemuel and Olivia are perhaps the best exponents of this, their on screen realisation gives them both a brooding air of menace that just isn't apparent in the novel.  At least we get to find out, via Manfred, exactly what shade of different Lemuel is and make no mistake everyone here in Midnight is a little different.  Fiji is loud and proud about her differences right from the beginning so there is no mystery there but by the end of the first book everyone else is just a varying degree of peculiar with no reveal.  The problem is by the time I got to the end of the book I found I didn't really care too much.

I also found that I could not stir up any real interest in the cast and their various predicaments.  Indeed, where it not for having watched the TV Series I would be hard pushed to remember any names at all, ridiculous as some of them are - Bobo, seriously!  The best written character, for me, was The Rev.  His secret is well hidden and he comes across as a tortured soul who is trying his best to make amends for past indiscretions, he really did work well in the book.

The plot wasn't enough to salvage the book from mediocrity either.  The disappearance of Audrey and the ramifications from that are handled well and do manage to drum up some tension - the resolution of it is a mere damp squib though.  Considering what the resolution is this is a surprise but it just doesn't quite work.  The parallel story of Bobo and his family's links to some less than salubrious groups just seems completely outrageous and unlikely.  Add to that the weakest fizzle out of a storyline I have seen in some time and it becomes an exercise in eye rolling.

I should have known that this would be a disappointing read of a wonderful idea.  Why?  Simply put the Harper Connolly series never managed to capture my imagination so that stopped at the first book and the Sookie Stackhouse series got progressively more and more bizarre so that by the time I was 5 or 6 books deep I was reading more for the ridiculous situations than anything else.  Unfortunately Ms Harris seems to be an author that comes up with some fantastic ideas but then manages to dilute them in their execution.

I have given this 3 Stars mainly because I am aware that I have been comparing this to the TV Series all the way through and that I may have allowed that to colour my impressions of the novel.  Honestly I think I gave this book 1 Star just because I felt sorry that it didn't match up to what followed.