It hadn't been very long for me since I read the first book in this series, Midnight, Texas, so I didn't really need it, but Harris does a nice little cast call in the first few pages of the book, reminding us of all the dramatis personae we got to know in the first book. A large corporation has purchased the defunct hotel in town and are renovating it to turn it into a senior citizens transitional facility, with a few regular hotel rooms to rent to nearby tech workers, as well. Manfred and Fiji and Bobo and the rest of our friends gather gradually on Witch Light Road to watch the construction crews arrive, and the work begin. Nice touch.
The main plot of the story, however, results from an unfortunate incident related to Manfred's work. One of his clients, an elderly woman whose husband recently "passed on to the other side" dies suddenly during a reading, and the woman's paranoid son accuses Manfred of murdering her and stealing her jewelry, which she had hidden from her greedy offspring. Manfred and his friends attempts to discover the whereabouts of the missing treasure and the identity of the real murderer (it wasn't really natural causes after all) proceeds in a haphazard fashion, but eventually accomplishes at least one of those goals, with some surprising twists along the way.
There's more than one tie-in to the Sookie Stackhouse series here that all her fans will appreciate, and Midnight, Texas acquires a few new residents to keep things interesting. We also get the chance to learn some surprising things about various residents during our sojourn in the Lone Star state.
Time to put the next book on hold at the local library.
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