Homicide for the Holidays

Looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer? Something for that crime-obsessed brother-in-law? A vicariously murderous read to get you through this pandemic-challenged festive day? Here's a non-exhaustive collection of recent crime novels that explore Western Canada's culture, climate, & geography. 

Starting from the West Coast, there's The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal that follows Nora, a traumatized transient & former foster child, as she searches for her missing daughter from the drenched gray streets of Vancouver to the icy white mountains of the BC interior. Or explore Vancouver’s fabulously beautiful North Shore in R.M.Greenaway’s ‘River of Lies’ (Dundurn Press) along with three jaded RCMP officers as they investigate a baffling murder and a missing toddler.   

 If your taste runs to hard-boiled investigations on the gritty streets, tour the worst parts of Vancouver, BC with A.J. Devlin. Former pro wrestler "Hammerhead" Jed Ounstead encounters tent cities, wrestlers, roller derby, and plenty of human detritus on both sides of the law. ‘Rolling Thunder’ (Newest Press) is the series’ 2nd outing.  Another wise-cracking Vancouver PI is 29-year old Dave Wakeland. In “Invisible Dead" by Sam Wiebe, Dave’s dogging the cold trail of his hot ex... straight toward a showdown with a cabal of Vancouver’s most deadly and powerful. 

Far from the crowded streets of the Lower Mainland, Interior towns may look idyllic, especially under a blanket of pristine Christmas snow. But don't let the purity of all that white deceive you: every town has a dark interior life, and none more than in Roz Nay’s ‘Hurry Home’ (Simon & Schuster). Child protection officer Alexandra Van Ness is loving her life until her troublemaking sister breezes back into town. Their shared past threatens to spill over into the present, tangling Alexandra in long-buried terrors just when she most needs her calm professionalism to save a child from imminent peril. 

Another small town with a dark underbelly is historic Nelson, BC in the Kootenay Mountains, setting for Lucky Jack Road (Mosaic Press) by J.G. Toews. When Jack Ballard, an elite mountain biker with a mile-wide mean streak, is found at the bottom of a ravine with his mangled bike nearby, intrepid reporter  Stella Musconi teams up with RCMP Sergeant Ben McKean to determine whether it was unlucky chance that ended his winning forever, or willful murder by someone even meaner than Jack.  

Cranbrook author DaveButler’s ‘Full Curl’ (Dundurn Press) features Jenny Willson, a caustic warden from Banff National Park who considers poachers and bureaucrats equally repulsive. If animal protection and environmental conservation are on your Christmas list, you can’t go wrong with this anti-poaching procedural by an author who worked the front lines against poachers in Canada’s best-known National Parks. On the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains there's J.E. Barnard’s Why the Rock Falls (Dundurn), in which a burnt-out RCMP officer and a disabled art historian team up to tackle the wilderness disappearance of a Calgary oil baron and the inexplicable drowning of a fading Hollywood starlet. 

For a love song to the prairies’ people, places, and history, visit ‘The Ancient Dead’ (Dundurn) by Barbara Fradkin. Set partly amid the Drumheller hoodoos, the mystery starts with a dinosaur bone hunt and delves into the dusty secrets of a prairie farming community that, over the decades, have seeped deep into Calgary’s oil-company office towers. North of almost everywhere in Alberta (but still only mid-province) we come to The RedChesterfield, a genre-bending novel by Edmonton’s Wayne Arthurson. All I’ll say is that spotting a red chesterfield in a ditch changes a bylaw officer’s life in far more ways than you (or he) expect.

Eastward one more time, to Regina, Saskatchewan and Bone Black, a horror-glazed novel about a Cree woman’s search for her missing sister, the dark paths she is pulled along, and the devastating toll paid by all Indigenous families in the ongoing loss and murder of their women and girls. Author CarolRose GoldenEagle is Cree Dene with roots in Sandy Bay, Saskatchewan. 

To finish us off with a lighter note, visit any of the Russel Quant novels by multi-Lambda nominee/winner and longtime Saskatoon resident Anthony Bidulka. Whether globe-trotting or home on the snow-swept range, Russel solves crimes, wines/dines, and finds romance, backed up by a cast of delightful secondary characters I came to love as much as my own family. 

Enjoy!

Holiday Reads Old and New

In December, don't most readers' thoughts turn to Christmas? 

While my tastes run to murder and mystery, after a rough year like this one has been, I'm breaking with tradition and including some lighter and sweeter fare. So get ready for a smorgasbord of holiday reads.

My oldest favourite: Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh

Coming very late in her Roderick Alleyn detective series (#27, published in 1972) this novel has all the classic elements of a Golden Age mystery from the isolated English manor house to the arrogant owner and the small cast of suspects with a plethora of motives among them. It's also textured, theatrical, and (now) historical in the sense of exploring a few very old, very localized holiday traditions. If you're interested, check out this much more detailed write-up at 

https://www.classicmysteries.net/2016/12/from-the-vault-tied-up-in-tinsel.html

Leaping ahead to 1999 we visit an snow-dusted Cotswold village in 'Aunt Dimity's Christmas' by Nancy Atherton. Transplanted American Lori is barely settled into her marriage and motherhood when a stranger stumbles into her driveway and collapses into a drifted-over hedge. As the holiday season unfolds Lori juggles the domestic duties and decorations while visiting the unknown in hospital and trying to retrace the stranger's wanderings to learn his identity and his purpose in coming to her cottage. 

For more see https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/nancy-atherton/aunt-dimitys-christmas/

 A decade later and across the ocean to Canada, we stop off in Quebec for a bone-chilling tale of family secrets and snowstorms in 'Beautiful Lie the Dead' by Barbara Fradkin. Police Inspector Green is searching for a missing fiance amid the blizzard of the decade when a body turns up, literally, in the tumbled track of a snowplow's blade. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7933224-beautiful-lie-the-dead

2019's entry is from the Alberta Rockies. 'Where the Ice Falls' by J.E. Barnard is set in the foothills hamlet of Bragg Creek, west of Calgary. Following the discovery of a dead intern at an elite private winter playground, a young ex-RCMP officer investigates oil company fraud while struggling with  PTSD and the question of whether the dead can communicate with the living.

More at https://www.vanessa-westermann.info/barnard-where-the-ice-falls-review

Stocking Stuffer Suggestion

CRIME WAVE 

by Sisters in Crime Canada West

This sassy little collection by crime authors from the prairies to Vancouver Island includes police procedurals, comic gems, a diamond heist, some extreme winter sporting, and a holiday hot tub homicide.

http://ow.ly/A1M450CKG7a  

 

Now to a new crop of novels for 2020, all thanks to #Netgalley:

 Mrs. Morris and the Ghost of Christmas Past by Traci Wilton is a gentle cosy mystery set at a B&B in Salem, Massachussetts .It has pretty decorations, a resident ghost, tourist highlights, and some romance. Very low-conflict if this year's held more than enought troubles for you already. The title character's spats with her mom seem more contrived than credible, and neither advance nor detract from the plot. #MrsMorrisandtheGhostofChristmasPast

The Christmas Swap by Sandy Barker is an expanded angle on the movie 'The Holiday' with Kate Winslet & Cameron Diaz. This cheery tale has three house swappers, all friends: one in an Oxfordshire village, one from an Australian beach town, and one high in the Colorado mountains. Great escape in this armchair-travel-only year, following Lucy, Chloe, and Jules as they learn about life, love, and friendship. #TheChristmasSwap

An Ivy Hill Christmas by Julie Klassen offers a Christian romance against a sketched-in Regency backdrop. The pace is leisurely and the 'rake's redemption' plot unfolds with credible slowness, filled with increasingly good deeds and frequent reflections on bible verses and the true meaning of Christmas. Be prepared to find Our Hero exceedingly annoying at first, the better to appreciate his transformation. Acquaintance with series characters could be useful. #AnIvyHillChristmas

Winter Wishes at Swallowtail Bay by Katie Ginger follows Nell, proprietor of Holly Lodge, as she scrambles to stage the perfect wedding for guests while a fancy new hotel is stealing most of her business. Her best friend is in love with her but will she see it in time? #WinterWishesatSwallowtailBay

 A Christmas Carol Murder by Heather Redmond lays credible claim to Victorian Christmas in this re-imagining of Dickens' famous tale. We follow Charles Dickens himself through the sooty streets and aged alehouses as he follows up an abandoned baby along with several suspicious deaths. There's a cast list, much needed to sort out the historical characters, those lifted from Dickens' fiction, and those newly-created by Redmond. #AChristmasCarolMurder

 

Bonus content: 

Possibly the most decorative Hallmark movie of 2020

 A Timeless Christmas with Erin Cahill and Ryan Paevey  

The Unlocking Season - a tour-de-force from Canada's Grand Master of Crime

 

The Unlocking Season*

by Gail Bowen

Canadian Grand Master of Crime Gail Bowen turns in a tour-de-force for her series devotees with The Unlocking Season, the nineteenth entry in her Joanne Kilbourn series.

'Unlocking' here refers not only to solving the crimes both large and small that occur, but to unlocking long-buried memories and emotions from Joanne's youth. She's acting as a script consultant for a documentary series about the decades-long intertwining of her family’s superficially serene life with the decidedly un-peaceful life of that notorious artistic dynasty, the Love family.

The documentary opens on a flashback, a young Joanne and her best friend Sally Love, on a raft at a lake where they'd spent so many golden summers. Longtime series fans will recall what happened during that last idyllic summer: an event that changed all their lives forever, and built relationships between the characters that endure, deepen, and sometimes tragically end during succeeding novels.

As the documentary script comes together, much is revealed or revisited from the earliest books, arising gracefully in conversation and inner monologues, punctuated by the sights, sounds, and aromas of life in a large, loving, multi-generational family. Series regulars make appearances, catching the longtime fan up on developments in the lives of family members and friends. For new readers, trying to keep track of all the characters mentioned in the early chapters could be challenging, however Bowen does her usual exemplary quick sketches delineating the family connections and their historical significance, and as rapidly lets us know which characters are leaving the stage and which will be key players in this particular volume.

The plot kicks into a higher gear quickly enough once the chief scriptwriter is found wandering, dazed and delusional, after a location-scouting trip to a renowned photographer's island cabin. More troubles pile up, pointing to larger issues in the writer'slife, and soon the whole show is in jeopardy.

The efforts of Joanne and the production people to get the documentary back on track are a jointly a foray into the mysteries of television production and a slow-build corkscrew penetrating the messy personal and business relationships of cast members and production crew. Tempers flare. Disagreements spiral into destruction. Nobody knows who to trust as the tension thickens on-set and off. The stage is set for a conflagration that may destroy the production as well as the people.

As a longtime reader of the series, I'm easily drawn back into worrying for my favourite characters, especially Taylor Love, daughter of the ill-fated Sally, whose life I have followed with a whole heart for nearly two decades now. I also particularly enjoy the author's attention to sensory details: the repeat appearances of forsythia outside the window where Joanne rests her eyes and mind, The swath of Prussian Blue silk enfolding us in Joanne’s memories of a woman she both adored and feared. The meals that tantalize your tastebuds. Most particularly the paintings done by Sally Love and her father Desmond; these fictional images form the backbone of many scenes in the series. In this book they are deliberately placed to inspire, reflect, and add layers of meaning for both characters and readers as the complex plot yields up its secrets one shattered lock at a time.

 A word about the narration: at first the narrator seems too young for Joanne at sixty, but her characterization grew on me and the female characters were easy to distinguish from each other. The masculine voices were less successfully differentiated and somewhat flat-sounding in terms of emotional tone.

 This novel is highly recommended as either a fitting continuance or an introduction to this long-running series.

*Audiobook via NetGalley

The Lost Scroll of the Physician

A thrilling preteen adventure set in ancient Egypt, yet fully accessible and exciting for the modern young reader.

The Lost Scroll of the Physician
by Alisha Sevigny
(Secrets of the Sands, Book 1)
Dundurn Press

When we first meet Sesha she is scavenging on the streets for food, trying to keep her younger brother Ky safe after the murder of their parents, possibly on orders from the pharaoh he served as Royal Physician. Ky has an illness only treatable by court physicians answering to the pharaoh; when he has a seizure she must decide whether to take him back to the palace despite the risks there.

Soon Sesha is entangled in Palace friendships and intrigues. Under orders from Pharoah she's tasked to find a scroll her father was working on. Can she discover it to keep the ruler's goodwill for Ky? Can she earn her place back at court?

Amid revelries for the annual Inundation, when the Nile floods and restores fertility to the cultivated areas of Egypt, Sesha and a handful of allies face dangers both seen and unseen. learning lessons in life, relationships, and power politics while they struggle to survive.

Highly recommended as both a tension filled junior crime story and an educational look at life in ancient Egypt.

@alishasevigny @dundurnpress

 
See JE Barnard's books & movie reviews (both the grim and the gleeful) 

 
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Survival, Sex, and Self-Loathing: - Paris Never Leaves You

Paris Never Leaves You 

by Ellen Feldman

How far would you go to save your child? That’s the central question in Ellen Feldman’s new novel, “Paris Never Leaves You.”

 Drifting backward and forward by a decade between the Nazi Occupation of Paris and the publishing world of New York City, this deeply internal novel follows Charlotte Foret, war widow and mother of Vivi, as she faces down the privation and humiliation of the war only to be haunted by the peace.

 A refugee sponsored from her father’s American publisher friend, Charlotte has built a new life in America for herself and Vivi. She has a comfortable apartment, friends, a congenial job as an editor of fine books. The prologue lets us know this story will hearken back to the war, but still – when I was barely settled into the New York story – I was caught off guard by the swift setting of a hook that, in retrospect, more than delivered on its initial promise.

When a letter from Bolivia is delivered to Charlotte’s New York office, her confrontation with her Paris past seems inevitable. The tension rises from that moment, sending Charlotte into flashbacks as she grapples with how much to tell her daughter about her war years, and Vivi’s parentage. The landlord, a military veteran with his own wartime secret, recognizes in Charlotte a similar terror of facing her own shadows. As they gradually open up to each other, the secrets exposed reveal more secrets beneath, each layer both intensely personal and achingly understandable.

Threaded through the plot are revelations about the status and struggles of Jews not only in Hitler’s Europe but in post-war America. The character of Vivi allows a glimpse into the uneasy maturation of survivor children, too young to remember the Holocaust they were born into and yet affected by its shadow every day. Yet this is not the now-classic tale of camp horror and fresh starts that seems foreshadowed at the start. It explores lesser-known devils’ bargains made for survival by ordinary people across an entire continent, and the psychic scars those bargains impose on the survivors in their post-war lives.

A taut, and fraught, tale of the depths a mother must plumb to protect her child in a world gone mad.

Paris Never Leaves You

 Published August 4th 2020 by St. Martin's Griffin

Hardcover, 368 pages  ISBN 1250759897 (ISBN13: 9781250759894)

#ParisNeverLeavesYou #NetGalley #amreviewing #amreading #bookstagram #Paris #WW2 #motherhood

The Light In Trieste By Rosemary Aubert

Three women separated by a century yet bound to Trieste by hope, betrayal, and a single piece of glass with an exalted provenance.

The Empress Elizabeth of Austria – Sisi as she was known to her intimates – was a woman of legendary loveliness, impressive intelligence, and iron determination. Too young pushed into a loveless marriage, chosen as simply another beautiful object for her new husband’s collection, she’s worked tirelessly for the empire and scraped as much independence as she can from the stultifying life of the Imperial Court. Now she’s had enough. Wielding only her beauty and the perfect prism, can she engineer an enduring alternative life for herself?

After five decades of turmoil in Europe – including two world wars and the eradication of the Austrian Empire – the prism resurfaces in the hands of a skilled young mathematician. Marijana is on loan from Yugoslavia to an American-led scientific construction in Trieste, and through her attempts to escape her Communist future we learn more of the prism’s history.  Five decades later Ravenna, another math-minded woman who came of age in the chaos of post-Soviet Europe, tracks down Marijana, bringing the prism and its storied provenance back to the light.

Covering this wide span of geopolitical history, it's inevitable that some subjects will not receive as much attention as some readers might wish. The book is an invitation to explore as much as an intriguing tale.

 

Woven through this saga of strong women fighting Fate is a love song to the perfect order of mathematics and the intricate machinery of scientific discovery since the European Renaissance.

The Light In Trieste

By Rosemary Aubert

Carrick Publishing (2020)

ISBN-10: 1772421146

ISBN-13: 978-1772421149

 Born in Niagara Falls, New York, Rosemary has long made her home in Toronto, where she has worked as a university instructor, an editor and a bookstore clerk and of course-a writer.

The Nightshade Cabal by Chris Patrick Carolan

*** DROPS FEBRUARY 27, 2020 at OWLS NEST BOOKS ***

The Nightshade Cabal

by Chris Patrick Carolan 

©2020 The Parliament House Press

“The resulting calamity would have made the nine muses weep…”

In this debut novel of Steampunk Crime, there’s no cause for readers to emulate those sad muses. Carolan’s prose offers the easy formality familiar to readers of Steampunk from Jules Verne to the present. His is a world familiar in some ways – quasi-Victorian Halifax against the Murdoch Mysteries’ Toronto – and unfamiliar in others, namely the mingling of mechanical marvels with magical practices. From the first scene, in a crowded theatre where a stage magician’s illusory creations threaten to unleash very real mayhem on the dazzled audience, you can relax into a tale equal parts Vernean fantasia and Sherlockian deduction.

Our doughty sleuth, Isaac Barrow, specializes in repairing machinery that has magic built into its design. As one of the few remaining technomancers in public practice – the rest having been driven underground by a distrustful city – he is sometimes quietly called upon to assist the police in their odder inquiries. Often these are connected to the secretive Nightshade Cabal, magic-users nominally kept in check by the equally publicity-shy Triune Congress.

But there are places even the Triune’s magisters avoid...

Into these dark byways Isaac Barrow must tread, hunting for two missing teens: an unremarkable neighbourhood boy, and a girl whose own family admits she was mixed up with the Cabal once before. Threatened by both the Cabal and the Triune, and aided by unlikely allies – notably including a gruff little Fae with a Feegle-sized chip on his tiny shoulder – Barrow penetrates both the mansions of the powerful and the foetid underbelly of Halifax’s wharves.

The Nightshade Cabal is that rare crossover likely to satisfy equally readers of crime and of Steampunk. Part homage to the greats in both genres, it’s also entirely it’s own creation. I anticipate further good reads from Chris Patrick Carolan.