“Midnight Crossroad” by Charlaine Harris (Gollancz)

A great start to a new series

Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It's a pretty standard dried-up western town.

There’s a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There’s a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there’s new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he’s found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).

Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth…

This is the first novel of Harris’s that I’ve read, and I must say I rather enjoyed it. A gently-paced mystery, with a supernatural slant, and populated by endearing, varied and well-constructed characters.

Recently Received Titles…

Featuring: Anne Bishop, Carole K. Carr, Joël Dicker, Charlaine Harris, Tanya Huff, Mark Millar, Gary Meehan, Isla Morley, Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter, Tom Rachman, Samantha Shannon, Joel Shepherd, F.R. Tallis, David Wingrove

Cemetery Girl, Vol.1 – “The Pretenders” by Charlaine Harris & Christopher Golden (Jo Fletcher Books)

An excellent first part in an original graphic novel trilogy by two New York Times bestselling authors

Writers: Charlaine Harris & Christopher Golden | Art: Don Kramer | Colours: Daniele Rudoni | Letters: Jacob Bascle

She calls herself Calexa Rose Dunhill — names taken from the grim surroundings where she awoke, bruised and bloody, with no memory of who she is, how she got there, or who left her for dead.

She has made the cemetery her home, living in a crypt and avoiding human contact. But Calexa can’t hide from the dead — and because she can see spirits, they can’t hide from her.

Then one night, Calexa spies a group of teenagers vandalizing a grave — and watches in horror as they commit murder. As the victim’s spirit rises from her body, it flows into Calexa, overwhelming her mind with visions and memories not her own.

Now Calexa must make a decision: continue to hide to protect herself — or come forward to bring justice to the sad spirit who has reached out to her for help...

This is Charlaine Harris’s first original graphic novel project. Teaming up with fellow New York Times bestselling author Christopher Golden, they have come up with something pretty interesting, too. The Pretenders is the first part of a trilogy, and as a result does not present a tidy ending. In fact, rather the opposite: by the end of the book, Calexa has helped solve one crime, it’s true, but along the way readers will be confronted by a number of intriguing questions and mysterious goings-on – be they Calexa’s memories or her new-found powers.

The artwork throughout is pretty good – it’s nothing particularly unique, but it is clean and clear; and overall the compositions enrich the story and realise it in a vivid, eye-catching manner. The story itself moves at a good clip: despite the relative slimness of the book, the story doesn’t feel rushed, but not does it feel drawn out. In fact much of the story focuses on Calexa getting used to, and making her life in the cemetery (now you know where the series title comes from), and I actually liked this. The Urban Fantasy equivalent of the Origin Story, perhaps? The synopsis states that she avoids people, which is for the most part true, however, despite her sneaking about, there are a couple of people who learn of her existence and extend a helping hand (albeit clandestinely). For me, it was this part of the story – one of unexpected kindness and help – that stood out. No doubt, with parts two and three, the supernatural shenanigans and Calexa’s past will be unveiled. I’m certainly looking forward to finding out the true about what brought our protagonist to the cemetery in the first place, but in the meantime, The Pretenders is a great introduction to this setting.

Recommended for all fans of Harris’s and Golden’s previous prose-fiction, but also Urban Fantasy as a whole and comics that dabble in similar territories (for example, the Buffy graphic novels, which Golden has also worked on).

An Interview with CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

Very few fans of genre fiction and comics will be unaware of Christopher Golden. He has been writing for a couple of decades, now, mainly horror (or horror-inflected) work. Many will know him for his novels, his anthology work, and also his comics work – including the Baltimore books with Hellboy creator, Mike Mignola. He has a new short story collection coming out next month, through ChiZine, and has an impressive number of other projects he’s currently working on. I caught up with him (via email), and grilled him about writing, horror, and what he’s working on now…

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Christopher Golden?

At 46, you’d think I would have an answer to that, but I’m still working it out. I’ve been writing full time since 1992, with the sale of my first novel, OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS. Since then, I’ve written or co-written or edited about a hundred books, mostly fiction in the horror, fantasy, mystery, and thriller genres. I’ve written comics and short stories, video games and an animated web series, radio plays and screenplays.

Your short story collection, Tell My Sorrows to the Stones, was published by ChiZine last month. How would you introduce the book to a potential reader? Is there a unifying theme for the stories within?

I’ve written short stories for as long as I’ve been writing novels. My previous short story collection, The Secret Backs of Things, collected everything I had done up until that point. But it felt to me as if somewhere along the way I reached a point where I felt as if I’d actually sort of figured it out – this whole short story thing. I’m not saying I don’t like any of my older stories. I like them just fine, most of them. But I do feel as if I grew up a little bit somewhere in there, passed a kind of threshold where I understand the form better than I had before. I often say that my novel Strangewood was when I grew up as a novelist. I think the stories in Tell My Sorrows to the Stones represent a similar maturing, only this time in short story form. There’s more thought in them, for me. More reason for them to exist than the other ones had. A lot of them are about folklore and imagination and belief in general – not religious faith, but faith in ourselves and how dangerous it can be to misplace that sort of faith.