The Back Door of Midnight by Elizabeth Chandler

4 stars

An artistically written novel that gets you right into the action… but leaves some explanation behind.

Anna Kirkpatrick (born Anna O’Neill) has lived with adoptive family since she was three, when her mother was brutally murdered in a robbery. After receiving a strange letter from her biological great uncle, she decides to return to the town where her mother died. When she arrives, however, she discovers that her uncle has been murdered and she is left to take care of her “psychic” and unstable Great Aunt Iris. As Anna attempts to understand the mysterious circumstances surrounding her uncle’s death, she starts to realize that she has uncovered a dark secret that is decades old. Not knowing where to turn or who to trust, Anna must rely on her own instinct and burgeoning psychic abilities to discover the truth… before it’s too late.

I couldn’t figure out if I hated this book or loved it. For one thing, it “tells” more than it shows. We never meet Anna’s adoptive family, but we hear about them almost every third page. Some things are hinted at, then left unexplained, and at times you feel as though you’ve skipped a chapter by accident. My biggest issue was that everyone in the book readily agreed that being psychic was a normal phenomenon, as though it had been accepted as fact by the scientific community. In a way, it was like the author was trying to save time. The book is a quick read, but if all the finicky details surrounding the doubt, confusion and even fear that should have arisen due to the events in this novel had been kept, the book would have been well over four hundred pages long. As it was, each of the characters seemed to skip directly to acceptance and carry on. Also, the author actually puts the phrase “the back door of midnight” in the book, which is like someone laughing at their own joke: unforgivable.

However, there were some things that I absolutely adored about the book. It was incredibly twisty, and the author did a good job of building this elaborate mystery surrounding multiple characters and families. The drama was tight, the action quick – the last couple of chapters were especially hard to put down. The writing itself can occasionally descend into flowery prose, but for the most part the narrative is beautifully and artistically written. The characters are well-described, and while they occasionally become a little too stereotypical they are definitely characters in their own right with specific thoughts, feelings and emotions. Overall, worth the read.