The Dead of Midnight

Marie T. Gillis is a member of the Angus L. Macdonald Library staff at
St. Francis Xavier University.

Sarah Petursson and many of her neighbors frequent The Mystery Au Lait
Café and are enthusiastic members of its book club. A series of books,
known as Midnight Mysteries, are being featured over a five-week period.
Suddenly murder and mayhem strike, and the horrified readers recognize
that the homicides in their community are carbon copies of those in the
books.

Sarah is drawn into these events. At the same time, she begins an
emotional journey that will bring her closer to her mother, the poet
Carolyn Yeats, whom she lost at the age of six. As literary executor of
her mother’s estate, she inherits not just papers relating to
Carolyn’s poetry, but also journals that reveal her life. Of paramount
importance to Sarah is the question of her paternity. As she reads her
mother’s journals, she is dismayed to realize that Carolyn has
protected her father’s identity even after death.

Catherine Hunter, a poet and mystery novelist, has fashioned a tale
that combines elements of both the normal and the paranormal. Her
characters are part of a community, interconnected allies or enemies
with long histories and some deeply hidden secrets. Best of all, Hunter
gently mocks the conventions of mystery novels even as she uses them to
her own advantage. Engrossed in the book she is reading, Sarah knows
that the hero is chasing the wrong person, simply because there are a
hundred pages left in the novel. The excerpts from the Midnight
Mysteries are skilful parodies, and the red herrings in The Dead of
Midnight are set in place with a wink and a smile. The real clues,
however, are deftly woven into the plot. Avid mystery readers will no
doubt be able, by instinct, to solve a part of the puzzle by
instinct—but only a part, for there are many twists in this
fast-paced, clever tale, which is wholly satisfying in both its
construction and its denouement.