The Creature on Crenshaw Road by M. L. Bullock

The Creature on Crenshaw Road by M. L. Bullock

M. L. Bullock finds the magic again with the ninth book in her Gulf Coast Paranormal series and I’m trying to figure out what she did that brought the series back to full bloom for me. The first part was obvious—there is a whole new kind of threat in this book. A physical monster, referred to as a cryptid, and the fact that there is a physical beast raises the stakes tremendously in this novel and that was obviously a good thing. Also, the mystery was a good one with both a historical aspect and a modern aspect, and there was no point in which I wasn’t engaged in solving it.

 

However, I think what worked best for me was that the personal interactions sparked in a way that they haven’t in the past couple of books. An old friend of Midas’ has come back to rejoin the team and they obviously are good friends sparking the possibility of major jealousy problems with his girlfriend. The old friend also used to date Pete and one of the new team members is interested in her. This does not turn into a soap-opera-esq romance, but it does add some worthwhile color to the cast and made the whole book work on multiple levels.