Review: Day Shift by Charlaine Harris

Manfred Bernardo, Midnight resident psychic, has gone to Dallas for a few days to do personal readings. He has a suite in a pricey hotel. One of his favorite clients, Rachel, a wealthy woman who comes to Manfred to connect with her recently dead husband, Morton, dies just as Morton comes through and touches his wife's fingertips. Manfred sees Rachel let go of her earthly form gladly follow. Could the day get any worse?

Not unless you consider the murder and suicide of the couple Manfred saw in the dining room the night before with Olivia. Three deaths in the same hotel in the same day will not look good to the police -- and it doesn't.

Reporters lay siege to Manfred's house, disturbing the usually quiet Midnight. Now that the old hotel has been renovated and 4 senior citizens are living their full time, supposedly waiting for a spot to open up in a nearby senior community.  The Rev takes in a young boy of about 8 whose appearance changes daily.  His rapid maturation has not gone unnoticed as one of the new residents from the Midnight Hotel stops by Fiji's to let her know he and the ladies noticed. Joe Strong tells Fiji someone needs to get rid of the extra attention before the next full moon.

After Barry the Bellhop arrives in town, he brings the solution, but not without the promise of more trouble.  His grandfather, Shorty, was moved from his Las Vegas to the hotel with the other three senior citizens. As always, nothing remains quiet for long in Midnight and Fiji, Olivia, and Manfred will have to sort it out.

The Midnight series has three books in the series so far. Day Shift is the second in Charlaine Harris's latest supernatural series. It seldom takes long before Charlaine drops a series and moves on to the next supernatural venue, I don't hold out much hope anything will change, not even with the new NBC series, Midnight, Texas debuting in 2017. At least, Barry the Bellhop and Quinn, characters from the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, add a bit of spice to the life in Midnight with a promise of more trouble to follow.

Once again, I have been drawn in Charlaine's storytelling and her ability to show how easy it is to slip over the line into the supernatural with her. Although the NBC series will be bloodier and scarier, there is no end to the mysteries found in Midnight. The only denizen of this haven not present is resident vampire, Lemuel Bridger, who is tracking down someone to help him translate some of the books Bobo Winthrop stored away. No doubt Lemuel will be back in time for the Night Shift.  

Charlaine Harris's cozy mysteries spins a nepotistic web between all of her supernatural southern stories. The storytelling shares the seductive quality of many southern tales, treating the strange and supernatural as nothing out of the ordinary. The veil between the mundane and the special is thinnest the South. Manfred mentions Sookie Stackhouse when Olivia discovers Barry is reading her mind. Midnight, Texas it seems is not so far removed from Bon Temps, Louisiana after all. In the end, Midnight's denizens welcomes a new resident who adds a special touch to the neighborhood. Definitely 4/5 stars for Day Shift because I know I won't get to visit Midnight for long. At least I have another piece to the puzzle that is Olivia.

Review: Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

After the disappointing and out of character ending of the Sookie Stackhouse series and being left hanging with Charlaine Harris's other two short-lived series, I swore would never read another Harris book. Then I saw the trailer for a new series set in Midnight, Texas and was hooked. Maybe, I thought, this time the series will last longer than 3 books.

That is the problem with Charlaine Harris. She draws me in with complex characters, hooks me with interesting relationships, and leaves me hanging when she moves on to new characters, new situations, and the same provocative come hither sideshow buildup only to be let down again and again. Sookie Stackhouse was different in that the series had a much longer and more fascinating life. Charlaine let me down (let all her readers down) when it became clear she was no longer interested in Sookie, the vampires, or the were creatures and was only phoning it in. The ending to Sookie's story was a let down and the last couple of books the characters were not acting like themselves like a lover hot one minute and frigid in the end.

Here I am into the second book in the Midnight Texas series, Midnight Crossroad and I can already see the hook and know without doubt that I will be left hanging again. Maybe not since the books have sparked a new TV series that feels different from the life of Manfred Bernardo and his new neighbors on Witch Light Road. There is a vampire working the night shift at the local pawn shop who has a mysterious girlfriend who might be a high class traveling hooker or a mercenary assassin and a tall, blonde, and handsome guy left in the lurch when his new girlfriend walked out on him 2 months ago. A witch and her marmalade cat live across the road next door to a dark and silent reverend who tends to the burials of pets in his back yard and performs a 3 or 4 weddings a year in his bare living room chapel. A father, daughter, and son own the Gas 'n Go down the road near the diner where a statuesque beauty, her handyman husband, and baby son offer home-cooked meals. Chuy and Joe Strong own the antique store and beauty salon where they live with their dog.

Into this tight knit community comes psychic, Manfred Bernardo, who conducts his business online and fits right into the neighborhood. The background and characters are pure Charlaine Harris and seductively readable. If Charlaine's past series are anything to go by, I have already been set up and will once again find myself down when she moves on to a new neighborhood and denizens with their own affinity for living on the boundary between reality and the supernatural.

The mystery that drives Midnight Crossroad is Bobo's missing girlfriend. Aubrey walked away one day and never came back. She left all her things 2 months ago. Bobo boxed everything up and stacked them in the pawn shop's store room and still grieves for her. No one has come looking for her, although Bobo reported her missing to the police a week after she disappeared. She was still missing until the day of the neighborhood picnic up at Cold Rock when Fiji follows her nose to the remains of the girlfriend still wearing her expensive sneakers.

The police are called and the local militia group, Stronghold, come to Midnight to serve their own brand of justice for the death of one of their own. Bobo was already in their crosshairs because his grandfather's cache of weapons, ammunition, and bombs should not be left to a left wing liberal not willing to put all that firepower to use for the coming redneck revolution. In the coming months when Texas secedes from the United States, the members of Stronghold will fire the first shot and lead the charge.

On thing I have learned over the years is that you cannot escape your true nature -- or your past. Nature is inherent and the past always comes back to haunt you no matter where or how far you run. I hope Charlaine will find a neighborhood on the edge of the supernatural that appeals to her long enough to keep her interested and that she will not walk away and leave with nothing but an occasional mention in another new town. I hope Charlaine Harris hangs around Midnight, Texas for a while and does not get too bored with Manfred and his new supernatural friendly neighbors.

I give Midnight Crossroad 4/5 stars for well written prose and a fascinating story that kept me guessing almost to the end. I took off 1 star because I already see the writing on the wall.

Check out the book trailer and keep an eye out for the new TV series.  And, yes, Francois Arnaud, who played Cesare Borgia on the Showtime series, The Borgias, was part of the reason I gave Charlaine Harris one more chance. I'm a sucker for a good story and Charlaine writes memorable stories.

Got Story?

Some books are a breeze to read, even when they run over 800 pages, and some books, no matter how long or short, are more like slogging through muddy clay wearing lead boots. Books like that often have excellent grammar, wonderful similes and metaphors, and the writing is sublime, but something is missing. An important ingredient didn't make it into the final product, like leaving the chocolate out of a hot chocolate. All that's left is hot milk and that is just gross. A little vanilla would help the taste, but chocolate makes it tasty.

Finding the reason why the book plods instead of zooms along has been the focus of my review work for the past 9 years of my professional reviewing life. After a box full of such books, I long for Stephen King, Dan Brown, or even an old favorite like Andre Norton. The genre doesn't make nearly as much difference as the writer. Stephen King loads on the horror, and I'm not averse to that. Dan Brown's technique leaves a lot to be desired and he loves information dumps, but he makes it all seem so effortless, if a bit facile at times. Andre Norton wrote what would now be considered YA (young adult) novels, but to me they were passports to worlds of magic and warfare and the stuff of dreams.

I recently read Moonfire by Marion Zimmer Bradley, whose Darkover series I devoured whole. The short story was disappointing and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I'd loved so many of her other short stories and novels, and series, so why wasn't it jelling for me? Why did I feel like I was plodding through that muddy clay pit in leaden shoes again?

I've been switching between E. L. Doctorow's All the Time in the World and The Flatey Enigma, both books that I have to review, and the leaden boots were getting heavier. A few of the stores in Doctorow's anthology were interesting but most seemed pointless. I chalked up having trouble getting through The Flatey Enigma as a fail in translation between Norwegian, the author's original language, and English. It happens sometimes, but then I enjoyed
Juan Gomez-Jurado's The Traitor's Emblem, despite a few plot inconsistencies. Maybe translations problems were not the source of my struggle with the book.

I put both books down and decided to read Charlaine Harris's Grave Sight, the first book in the Harper Connelly series. I have to force myself to put down the book so I can get some sleep or write for a while. It's that good. I have had the same reaction to most of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Harris.

That's when it hit me. I couldn't put the heavy plodding down to lack of characterization, bad grammar, horrid sentence structure, no technique, or being so in love with the words and creating beautiful and memorable passages. It's much more basic than that. There is no story. That's why I had to put A Dance with Dragons aside for a while and why Terry Pratchett's Pyramids got stuck going on the downslope. The authors did what so many authors fall prey to; they forgot the whole point of writing is to tell a story. Among all the witticisms, great battles, wonderful characters, and marvelous prose, the story was lost, and a good story is the only reason for a book to exist.

That's what Dan Brown, Stephen King, Andre Norton, and even Marion Zimmer Bradley when she's on her game, do so well. They tell great stories. The genre isn't important; that's a matter of taste. Story is important.

Literary, horror, adventure, thriller, science fiction, fantasy, romance, mainstream, none of that matters if the author keeps to the whole reason for books, if they tell a good story. Scheherazade would have been killed long before she got through her first night of storytelling for the king if she had been dressed it all up with fancy words and intelligent technique and forgot to tell an entertaining story that was so good the King had to keep listening, needed to know what happened next.

I read a considerable amount of literary novels but some authors leave me cold, no matter how many awards they win. I enjoyed Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending and couldn't get through John Banville's The Sea. Banville left me cold and Barnes's almost novella enticed me with wondrous prose, detailed descriptions, and a memorable character. Barnes's story was worth the read. I still can't get through The Sea.

Jasper Fforde's Thursday series has caught my interest and his stories are stories within stories, as has Ian McEwan's Atonement. I still haven't gotten to read any more of his books, but there are plenty in my to be read pile. Salman Rushdie enchants me with exotic fare and Terry Pratchett almost always makes me laugh while the tale ends far too quickly. Pyramids was an aberration -- or at least I hope so.

We are all children putting off having to go to bed, wanting to stay up just a little longer as our parents read just one more chapter of Peter Pan or Wind in the Willows or even Harry Potter. We want to hear a story, even a made up story, as long as it is a good story. Forget all the pyrotechnics, academic prizes, and prose stylings. All of those are as satisfying as a masterful and artistic wrapping job on a box that contains the good, in this case a story. Just tell me a story and make it a good one. I can live without the trimmings as long as there is sufficient meat on the bones. Books like that take no time at all to read because a wondrous story is at the heart of it.

When a writer forgets the basic premise of putting together a book, none of it matters if the story is not there or only half there. If you've got story; you will have readers, faithful readers who will snap up everything you write.

Charlaine Harris is not a prose stylist and her books are a joy to read most of the time because she tells fascinating stories. Harris unlocked the mystery that I have struggled with for so long, reminding me of what is important and why I write. It's all about the story. Where would Scheherazade be without a compelling story? As a storyteller, without listeners, but as a woman trying to save her life . . . dead.

Give them story.

A Tiger by the Tail

It is quiet for a change. The sounds of traffic on Colorado Avenue are muffled by the windows shut tightly against the cold breeze and another gray day. The little tree outside my window is finally turning gold and rustling briskly in the rising breeze. Inside, even with the thermostat set at 60 degrees, it is fairly warm, or at least comfortable, and I'm still smiling and chuckling from reading another Charlaine Harris Sookie Stackhouse book. This time it was Definitely Dead and it was a pip, if a bit of a confusing book at first.

I already knew I liked Quinn from the previous book when he was Master of Ceremonies for the choosing of a new pack master for the Shreveport Weres, but I liked him even more as the book progressed. Unlike Sookie, I wouldn't have balked at finding a quiet spot and wrapping my legs around Quinn's substantial and muscular waist. But then, I'm not a twenty-something single woman who lost her virginity about a year ago either. I was married and divorced at twenty-five. I'm also not a telepath like Sookie either.

The big confusion came with one of the main events of the story: settling cousin Hadley's estate.

Hadley had been murdered by another vampire a couple months before and Sookie talked about it as if it had been part of the previous book, Dead as a Doornail. I'm a careful reader and I didn't remember anything at all about Hadley's death, the search for her killer or the subsequent punishment meted out by Sophie-Anne Leclerq, Louisiana's vampire queen, or that she had come to Sookie's house to tell her about it. Uh, no, didn't happen. I wracked my brain and fussed and fumed over the missing scenes and info, and even went so far as to go back and read some of the latter chapters. Not there. How could I have missed it? Did I have defective books? Was I sold short? No.

The whole incident appears, I found after a Google search, in a short story, One Word Answer, in an anthology edited by Laurel K. Hamilton: Bite. Okay, I can deal with that. I now have to get the anthology and read the pertinent story, but at least I'm not losing my mind and I'm still a careful reader with excellent recall, a must for a book reviewer like me.

The usual blend of down home earthy wisdom and humor, Sookie's usual strength, intelligence and creativity in difficult situations and a blend of mystery, romance, sex and colorful characters are packed between the covers of Definitely Dead. I was not at all disappointed -- except for Sookie's very wise and completely inhibited choices, but that is who she is. She is at least true to her character and her nature, and she finally finds out that she is part fairy. Makes her feel that much more insecure, but not nearly as insecure as finding out Bill Compton, her first lover, seduced her at Sophie-Anne's orders. He says he fell in love with her once he met her, but it's too little too late and I'd react the same way Sookie did: disbelief and abjuration. Get out of my face and out of my life, you low life, double dealing, two-timing vampire Lothario!

Sophie-Anne in the books is not nearly as vapid and conceited as she appears on the show, True Blood, but few of the characters actually turn out the way Charlaine Harris envisions them in her novels. They are far different in Alan Ball's version, but that's what you get for artistic license, even when the license is as broad as Alan Ball sees it. I enjoy the HBO series and Charlaine Harris's books, but I do not confuse the two. I have seldom seen a movie or TV series based on a book that comes out the way the author intended. It's all about personal interpretations. I am sure that were I to dramatize some of my favorite books and stories, my take would be different than the author's original vision, but I would stick closer to the original plan than most directors, writers and producers usually do. It is the same in any relationship. People on the outside see a relationship differently than those on the inside, and the people involved in the relationship see it differently than their partner. We bring ourselves and our experiences, prejudices and viewpoints to every relationship and they are never the same as someone else's. Just like me being very willing to take Quinn for the tiger ride of his life while Sookie demurs. She is also reluctant to sleep in the same bed with him while he's still sporting his tiger tail. I think it would be even more fun.

Quinn is a weretiger, a Bengal tiger, 7 feet long and about 3 feet high at the shoulders. I do love cats, especially big cats.

Now I have to dive into a biography about the men who created today's tabloid journalism, and it's a big book. I'd rather dive back into the next Sookie book and see what happens next, but I'm a professional and must put the needs of paychecks before pleasure, and hope there is at least some pleasure in reading the biography. I have been surprised before.

That is all. Disperse.