Midnight is a quiet town like no other, in the middle of
rural Texas, with few people passing through. It’s a quiet place, an insular
place, a place where the few inhabitants have each other’s back – but keep
their secrets to themselves.
Manfred is a new inhabitant to the town and quickly finds the secrets run deep and there is far more than he imagined. Some of these secrets become exposed when a body is found…
This book shows Charlaine Harris’s main strength from the
very beginning. Charlaine Harris has a great talent for truly describing a
place, really getting a sense of what the town of Midnight is like. But it’s
not just the place, Charlaine is extremely good at describing a community and
how they all relate to each other. Even really small or background characters
are fit into the overall community and the characters that make up the
location.
This especially works with this series because it is such
a small community as well as the very nature of the community. It’s interesting
to see how close and supportive everyone is of each other, while at the same
time following Mightnight’s unwritten rules – complete acceptance and not
asking any questions. It’s a town for the misfits and people who can’t find
somewhere to fit in anywhere else and this is really well presented – not with
everyone having to be freaky or weird or odd to stand out – but just this really
subtle way everyone’s secrecy has been woven into the community to create a set
of unwritten rules that no-one ever has to overtly say though they’re always
clearly understood.
There is a problem with pacing. This is the first book in
the series and there’s a lot of introduction and description including a lot
that probably isn’t necessary. A lot of the earlier part of the book is taken
up setting the scene with rather more excessive detail than is necessary that
clogs things a little. Especially since it seems to be a while before anyone
actually gets involved in any murder investigation (though I did like the
moment when Manfred questioned why they’re investigating at all since none of
them are police). This slows down the general mystery as well for some time –
which is a minor element of dissatisfaction along with a completely
unpredictable ending.
One thing the book has is a separatist, white supremist,
racist, misogynist, homophobic group. The depiction is pretty good – they’re
not soft peddled or excused, they’re a repulsive as you’d expect. But they’re
repulsive without the need to turn them into outright cartoonish caricatures,
some of them are very very human and even nice (so long as the person they’re
being nice to is a nice White Woman) but the hatred is clear. A nasty bigot
doesn’t have to be frothing, they can be surprisingly pleasant people – but they’re
still repellent bigots. It also brings
in some nicely weird things happening like the whole Sovereignty Movement and
the bizarre actual belief that people can set up personal and pseudo states
basically by claiming they have. It was pretty well done managing to revile,
mock and depict these people as the danger they are. But also make it clear
they are not the only sources of bigotry and people shunned the POC or gay
people without being part of the hate groups.
We have a number of female characters and while some
could do with a lot more development – like Creek (who was cast as the
protagonists love interest for a long time) and Madonna; Olivia is typically
strong in that woman-as-weapon manner but not much more too her. But Fiji
definitely has a number of layers, strengths and vulnerabilities and
complexities as well as some interesting thinking – she’s a fun character to
dip into her head.
I want to love the gay couple in this book and I ALMOST
do. They’re not awful, they’re not major but they’re there and they’re pretty
present and there’s minimal homophobia and what there is is presented as
exactly how vile as it is. Which is great! Lots of ticks here, I have to
emphasise this, this is a characterisation which was extremely good… except…
they run a combination Antique shop and Nail Salon – in the middle of freaking
nowhere (which is the whole point of Midnight). I just… can’t even see these
businesses together – honestly, if they weren’t in Texas I think they’d be
running fingerskating lessons as well. It was like – oh so CLOSE. I also didn’t
appreciate Manfred’s little gay panic moment of Lemuel.
There was also a really large number of POC, Latinos and
Black people, they’re there, they’re presented and they permeate the story which
is excellent. And, again, any racism in the book is justified by the story and
nicely challenged. I think I would have liked to see more of Madonna than her
just constantly cooking in the diner (nor did I think describing her afro
needed the adjective “aggressive”)
Ok… problems. Problem I can’t really look past.
The end. And I’m going to talk around this not to spoil,
which is hard so this may be quite difficult to follow. But there is a serious
perpetrator of a serious crime in the town. They find this out and their guilt
is certain. This serious criminal is certainly dangerous and has a past record
of being dangerous – but he’s also completely and utterly human. Completely. Not
only human but he is an especially vulnerable human. He is dangerous because he
has a mental illness, he’s a sociopath.
And they kill him.
There is zero reason why the mortal authorities cannot
handle this criminal. There is no reason they can’t be locked up in a mental institution
or otherwise dealt with in a court of law. Instead they – and by “they” I mean
pretty much the whole town - murder this person. And this is just after we had
a long lecture about being restrained in their actions against some violent
White Supremists. You take the moral highground with the damn Aryan Nation but
not some person who is ill and helpless? Then they all go off and get all
JUDGEY over one of them telling lies to them all. Lies? They just all killed
someone but lies – rather reasonable lies at that – are bothering them?
There’s another element I didn’t like with the murder
victim – she is described as being flirtatious. And, exact quote: “Aubrey was
daring the world to kill her.” Which I find rather troublesome to say the
least, especially since this seems to be connected to her death – and because I’ve
read Charlaine Harris’s Poppy Done to
Death which had similar elements.
On the whole, I am intrigued. This place is an
interesting setting, we have a well created cast for this unique location which
now has a lot of depth and a lot of texture. We have a foundation here for a
lot more to come in the future, which intrigues me and draws me in. I look forward
to seeing more.
And I love the cat.
