Bright Shining As the Sun

Bright Shining As the Sun

by John Farrow 

This is a novel of contrasts. Shabby Park Avenue in Montreal against elegant Park Avenue in New York City. French language and churches against the English-language glass towers of high finance. The lifelong criminal against the ageing, ailing Sargeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars. 

 

A novel of Hells Angels' violent expansionism layered with psychological, even philosophical, suspense.

It’s also history, both of old school policing and old style biker warfare between the Rock Machine and Hells Angels that only ended after 150 bombs, uncounted shootings, and gang leadership on both sides imprisoned or entombed. 

 

In some ways, it's a retrospective of the long history of the Emile Cinq-Mars novel series.

Yet for all that, a person can pick this book up knowing nothing about the characters or the series, and to be drawn in by the strange request of a suspect in a biker bank massacre for a conversation with a retired cop now recovering from a gunshot wound. Once you're in, you may well find yourself going back to the earlier novels to learn how our wounded detective became this complex individual attempting to orchestrate a just solution to a whole symphony of criminal activity.

The external settings change as the evolving plot demands, but the internal landscapes of these men - the main suspect, the detective, an imprisoned biker leader, and a low level hitter with unsuspected connections - are more deeply explored. Can Emile unravel these criminals' business, emotional, and psychological links to make sense of the growing spiderweb of crimes. Can he settle this complex business before one of them, or their minions, catches up with his own wife while he is helpless to protect her?

This quote from the novel may be the best summation: 

 

“a good story, a good metaphor, a strong mythology that appeals to the imagination, that’s a way to interpret the world and keep us yearning, going forward forever. Revealing the intricacies of the trick has to await its time.“

The novel draws readers from the early, strange request and keeps us immersed through layers of investigation and excavation, through ethical and legal conundrums, to the final reveal. Storytelling in the hands of a master.

 

 #BrightShiningAsTheSun #ExileEditions #JohnFarrow #bikergangs #HellsAngels #gangwar #massacre #hitman #criminal #crimefighting #policeprocedural #Montreal #Quebec #psychology #suspense #crimefiction #NewRelease #OnSale #amreading #ARC #bookreview #CanLit 

Alice Rue Regrets... or does she?

Alice Rue Evades the Truth

by Emily Zipps 

“While You Were Sleeping” meets the 21st century, with better diversity representation and more complex relationship questions than just which potential mate will give her a happily ever after. Better still, if that’s all it was - a gender queer retelling - it would still be a worthy read because of Alice's inimitable voice: first person energy in a third person POV, which makes it easy to keep turning the pages, even when it’s late at night and you should be sleeping. 

After all, Alice isn’t sleeping. Between her first experience of performing CPR and fielding paramedics’ questions, and watching the hottest, richest crush of her entire adult life being shoved into the back of an ambulance, it’s not exactly her typical 4 AM.

And two hours later, her boss is trying to fire her when her crush Nolan's whole flaky family stops by on the way to the hospital, talking nonstop amongst themselves and with Alice, all yearning to learn what happened and whether Nolan will survive.

There is definitely more sexy chemistry than there was in that movie with Bill Pullman as the home-grown handyman sibling of sleekly handsome Coma Man. And yet it’s all tastefully done, easing Alice and Nolan's sibling Van believably closer by the day, with all the accompanying guilt feelings and a bit of obligatory cookie-baking. The comedic impact of the giant dog and cuteness factor of the adorably messy preschoolers adds a lot of heart to this tale of true love not running smooth.

True love isn’t the only thing at stake here either. Because Alice has some some trauma in her past to work through, and Van has some related issues that definitely trigger her, a HEA is far from guaranteed. There's unexplained tension between some family members and a bit of very polite homophobia that has to be managed. All in all, Alice faces a very real possibility that she is going to rue the day she ever met this family, especially as she keeps hurting the one member she most cares about.

Moral complexity, personal growth, issues of creating one’s own future place in the world, all raise this novel above its sweet and charming holiday rom-com inspiration. And it is way more thirsty than the sanitized for TV. Bill Pullman and Sandra Bullock story. 

 

Fun and heartwarming and touching in so many ways. And did I mention thirsty? If you yearn for a plaid-wearing, cuddly, sexy girlfriend this holiday season, this is the book for you.

 

#Netgalley #Penguin #EmilyZipps #romcom #lesbian #LGBTQ #Channukka #Christmas #sleepover #familydysfunction #siblingrivalry #mustlovedogs #friendship #deadendjob #coma #crisis #bossfromheck #hospital #baggage #trust #lies #relationships #love #foundfamily

Prodigals: the return is the same in any language

 Prodigals: a play by Sean Minogue

It's about a murder trial. Or is it?

 

Wesley broke the chains of small town drudgery right after high school, heading to the big city to study law and make something of himself. Now he's back, called to testify as a character witness for a man he used to know. At a loose end, he winds up back in the bar where he hung out in the old days, and finds his old gang still propping up the duct-taped bar stools, still airing the same grievances over the scarred pool table. To them, he's a reminder how far they haven't come, and old resentments stir in their sullen depths. 

 

Little do they know that Wesley's big city life isn't all cocktails and fashion models.  

 

Before he moved to the big city (Toronto) and started writing for magazines and newspapers, playwright Sean Minogue grew up in Sault Ste Marie, a steel town and Great Lakes transit hub in Ontario's rocky, mineral-rich northern vastness. Prodigals is set in Northern Ontario but it could be any small town in any Canadian province. Any shoddy bar you were a regular at as high school ended. The cast is everybody you left behind, or who left you behind when they went away. Now they're back, or you're back, dragging old hopes, forgotten failures, former loves and future hook ups. It’s a world where you don’t so much choose your life partner as drift into habits that aren’t easily broken. The best of a lot of not great options.  

(True story: faced with being stuck in a different Northern Ontario mill town for life, I bailed on my high school boyfriend and lit out for post-secondary too. Once you're gone, it's really hard to go back. You'll never fit into that small world again.) 

The prodigal son's return to his local bar is a trope familiar in many contemporary societies, as anyone who watched in cringing fascination the droll machinations of Bastian in the well-lubricated German mini-series  ÜberWeihnachten (2020) can attest. The secrets and desperation of small-town life get a darker and grittier outing in El Camino Christmas (2017), with the addition of American gun violence.  

No gun violence in Prodigal.and a bit less booze. It's very Canadian that way. Polite until pushed and then the blunt truth lands with the force of a one-two punch. 

 

The cast is tight: four men and two women, although you might believe you've met Benny, the man on trial, because he gets mentioned so often he's almost a presence even though he's never seen or heard from directly. The dialogue is spot on for its milieu: not the sparkle of a Noël Coward play nor the suburban marital snark of Neil Simon, but the everyday despair of Death of a Salesman. They're Canadian Willie Lomans here, minus the necktie and the travel. The ring of real life in every scene.  Questions of friendship, sex, loyalty, love, and the ethical challenges those can raise all get a look in without bogging down the narrative. 

 

You can take the boy out of the North, Wesley's visit tells us, but old bonds will strangle you just as surely when you return. For all its small-town roots, this Northern Gothic play - now book - makes for compelling theatre with a surprisingly wide appeal. 

 

Thanks to @lat46publishing and @river_street_writes for the review copy.  

Also check out Sean Minogue's debut novel, Terminal Solstice, from Turnstone Press.

 

#Latitude46 #RiverStreetWrites #Prodigal #SeanMinogue #plays #Canadian #playwrights #NorthernGothic #SaultSteMarie #murder #highschool #reunion #friendship #loyalty #casting #characters #smalltownbar #drinking #infidelity #trial #Ontario #betrayal #backstabbing #TurnstonePress 

 

On the Lam: entertaining shenanigans of Canadian escapers

On the Lam 

by  Lorna Poplak

Dundurn Press 2025

This entertaining and thoroughly researched little book starts off with a crafty escape involving glue and plastic trays. Then we get into a brief history of the prison system as it developed in Canada, after which follows a series of case studies in escape. 

 

Taken altogether, they showcase the inventiveness of Canadian criminals, and the loopholes in prison security. As the author puts it in her introduction, “the stories highlight the attempts of masterminds, tricksters, villains, and innocents to claw their way to freedom – – sometimes successful, mostly abortive, occasionally deadly.”

The book more than delivers on this promise to the reader. The writing is clean and competent, and ideas are presented in logical and consistent order. Research into the individual criminals, their escapes, and the prison system in general is obviously thorough, well presented, and referenced. 

 

From the notorious squalor and child punishments of the first Kingston penitentiary through the early 20th century shenanigans of Ernest Cashel around Calgary, and on up to the 21st-century, this is more than just an entertaining tale of criminals versus prison guards,. It’s a look at a whole section of Canadian history that is not generally taught in school.

 

#Canadian #bookreview #CanLit #NonFiction #BuyCanadian #stockingstuffer #prisonhistory #jail #CanadianLaw #escapees #prisonbreak #criminals #heist #caper #crooks #robbers #hustlers #murder #amreading #DundurnPress #OnTheLam

Wavelength: coming out from under the helmet

Wavelength

By Cale Plett

AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER until Oct 7

 This punk band novel will grab you from the first page. There’s a great mysterious set up, and just when it looks like the payoff is in sight, that we will find out what’s going on with Alexander, if not with his brother, the narrative jumps to Lillian, driving force in her high school band, who has just been dumped by her adored bass player, leaving the band torn by conflicting loyalties while its leader spirals.

Early on, much of the narrative is told with message chats, interspersed with one narrator or the other internalizing. It’s a style that works well and feels very contemporary. and even though we eventually realize it is teenagers talking, the issues they deal with are contemporaneous well into adulthood.: Education, breakups, coming out, the perils of being too recognizable, what to do with your life besides being part of something bigger?

Of course, these two worlds are going to collide, specifically over band practice. But since one of the participants is under deep cover, and the other is deep in emotional fallout, it is going to take a while to see where this goes.

Truthfully, after the frenetic feeling of these early chapters, the slowing pace feels like a relief, a chance to draw a breath, rather than a drag on the narrative. It’s really genius pacing for an age group raised on TikTok reels and 24/7 chat groups. Without the lulls, they would forget to breathe. it is the pause that refreshes.

Also, there are some delightfully snarky insights into the music industry, such as “lyrical, complexity of corn puffs”.

Something that interests me as a writer is that, because they don’t cross paths until the story is well begun, we readers literally don’t know what each narrator looks like. Each narrator eventually describes the other, illuminating the other’s appearance in their unique style/word choices, and that’s what gives us readers the full visual.

As the characters interact more in real life, and the text messages fade into the background, both narratives get a little bogged down dissecting every moment of their old and new relationships. The early tension in both narratives fades, the goals and consequences drift away, everything comes down to the immediate feelings. The intense interiority may not be a dealbreaker for you but, by the halfway mark, I was starting to yearn for some of that earlier tension again.

Fortunately, the stakes pick up again for both narrators, personally and professionally. Soon it is a breath-holding corkscrew read to the finish.

Themes include teen sexuality, gender identity, self expression, hyperfocus, rejection sensitive dysphoria, corporate pressures, music industry, and the anonymity of life as a corporate pawn.

Bonus content: 

The song 'Elevator' from the novel 

Link to Livestream of the book's launch on October 9th, 2025

#Netgalley #HouseOfAnansi #lgbtq #adolescence #YA #highschool #bandpractice #bassplayer #vocals #songwriting #fashion #celebrity #contracts #consequences #music #musicindustry #scandal #consent #statutory #imagepolishing #comingout #breakup #heartbreak #lies #secrets

Lots to Love in "Ladies in Hating"

 

Ladies in Hating

by Alexandra Vasti 

It is rare when the third book of a trilogy can be picked up cold and still be a delightful and engaging read. Of course it helps when the main characters here are peripherals in the other books and vice versa. Regardless, it's a quick, quality read that's vastly(!) entertaining.

 

This novel sparkles from the first word. Lady Georgiana, daughter of an earl, is a successful Gothic novelist...under a pseudonym, naturally. At present she is much beset by the realization that another author, using the pseudonym Lady Darling, is using similar situations and character names in their equally successful novels. Thus far readers have not complained, but Georgiana is certain that someone is spying on her writing, capitalizing on her success. And she must discover who it is. Because if she can’t, and if her writing career goes down the drain, then she and her mother, who left the family home to look after her, will have no income with which to feed and house themselves.

Cat Woolcott has a similar conundrum. She has just learned that the wealthy daughter of a house where her father used to be a butler is her chief rival in the matter of Gothic novel writing. Worse, Lady Georgiana accuses her, Cat, of stealing details and characters and even titles. If Cat's writing career goes down the drain, she will have no way to keep herself, her brother, and her older cousin Polly, who looks after them, from the poor house. She’s been working a day job all this time to keep them all fed and clothed while her brother studies law. But if she wants to get ahead of that despicable daughter of an earl, she will have to leave her day job at the pie shop to research a novel that Lady Georgiana cannot possibly know anything about. It’s a big risk and it’s all made worse by the fact that, under other circumstances, she would be more than happy to wangle a closer acquaintance with the delectable daughter of the big house.

When the two rival authors end up exploring the same moldering manor house, Gothic overtones balloon like a black cape against a full moon.Sapphic urges surge right along with them. There’s a nightgown in a moonlit library scene - a classic of the genre - and a secret garden, a scream in the night, a secret diary, and so much more. Even a cute dog with its own part in moving the plot along. 

Underpinning all the frivolity is a thoroughly convincing relationship-in-development that conveys the importance of deep honesty, owning one's mistakes, and mutual support through life's dangers and stressors. It's much more credible than a classic HEA where problems are expected to vanish the instant Love is mutually declared. It's easy to see why Alexandra Vasti is one of today's most popular Regency authors.

This is a fun, writerly, Regency romp that’s a send-up of the Gothic, equally as witty and ten times as naughty as Northanger Abbey.

 

#netgalley #Regency #romp #alias #gothic #ghost #ruinedmanor #secrets #love #lostlove #lesbian #family #foundfamily #macmillan #AlexandraVasti #romance #mustlovedogs #secretlovechild

 

 

When Deceit Becomes An Art Form

The Art of a Lie

by Laura Shepherd-Robinson 

A great many mystery novels start with a newly widowed person finding out the secrets of their deceased spouse. This one stands out, and not only because it is set in 1749. 

The money that could save Hannah Cole’s confectionery shop on Piccadilly is tied up in probate because the magistrate, Sir Henry Fielding, suspects that her dead husband came by his surprisingly large savings in some illegal way. With debts rising and every supplier determined to take advantage of a lone woman trying to run a business, it is very much in the widow’s interest to clear up the matter quickly. 

But Hannah has a secret to protect, especially from the handsome man who comes to her aid when she is at her most despairing. He finds her an Italian recipe for 'iced cream' that she can make with ingredients at hand. After some trial and error, Hannah's shop becomes a daily destination for the wealthy and noble citizens of London to try out the new delicacy. Her coffers are filling, her debt collectors learn patience, and she is flushed with success as much as from the attentions of this handsome, helpful gentleman.

But just as we've  becoming deeply engaged with the very sympathetic widow, there's a rather jarring switch of point of view, following which we learn that the helpful gentleman has his own secret, one equally perilous to his life as Hannah's is to hers. Yet he really would like to leave Hannah better off than when they met, and so he bends his skills to deflecting Sir Henry from seizing the money she should inherit. To do so, he must sniff out Fielding's secret weaknesses and exploit them.

Thus the dance of artful lies begins. Which of them will allow emotion to cloud their senses the most? Which will discover the other’s lies first? Will Sir Henry reach the truth about Hannah or her beau before he learns what the deceased was up to?

This is a novel thoroughly and believably embedded in 1749 London - in the accoutrements of daily living, such as carriages and urchins and lack of proper policing - and at the same time invoking the modern reader’s recognition of small-minded neighbours gossiping and the arrogant patriarchal attitudes of powerful men. Background characters and sidekicks abound, all easy to tell apart from each other where necessary .

One weakness is our helpful gentleman’s habit of spending pages regaling the reader with all his thoughts and intentions while not much action is happening. These we must take on faith as they do serve to deepen the character's background, and thus enhance his increasingly painful consciousness of having to to choose between his own best interests or Hannah's.

The stakes for both rise, the tension torques up, sometimes you root for one and sometimes the other. And soon you realize that every moment of respite, even of happiness, that our two protagonists snatch, together or separately, will have its full measure of payback. It's impossible to look away.

 

 Bonus content: a bit about iced cream as it was made and consumed in Georgian London

#Netgalley #SimonAndShuster #TheArtOfALie #Georgian #icecream #confectioner #historical #romance #fiction #historicalfiction #seduction #deceit #StJames #shopkeepers #London #murder #crime #historicalcrime #crimefiction #SirHenryFielding #widow #inheritance