New Tight, Dark Canadian Hard-Boiled from Vern Smith, SCRATCHING THE FLINT

Run Amok Crime Fiction releases today/tomorrow a new hard-boiled detective novel from Vern Smith. SCRATCHING THE FLINT continues to wind his dark twists tighter, until explosion is inevitable. Set in pre 9/11 Toronto, the book opens with a grim killing of a squealing witness that implicates a sleazy lawyer in the messy patterns of mob execution.

Hard-boiled as a genre is saturated with rage and impulse; Smith takes it a layer deeper by leaking the real precursor to rage, the inner morass of doubt and shame invading lives spent avoiding human connection. Here's Gordon, for instance:

First came Gordon's return to drink, falling down after last call in front of the Bovine Sex Club, breaking his wrist, claiming he did it rollerblading. The emergency doctor prescribed enough painkillers to kill all kinds of hurt. Then Gordon was hooked on those, too. Luckily, the cops didn't bother with a blood test three weeks ago, relying only on his breathalyzer reading, 0.81, which was bad enough. That made him not just a bona fide boozer, but a bona fide boozer inside the small world of Toronto journalism. ... Did that make Gordon lowlife? ... And did he even want to know?

Meanwhile, anti-fraud team Alex Johnson and Cecil Bolan (from Smith's earlier short story collection The Gimmick) try to break into the mobbed-up crime ring that Gordon wishes he were good enough to expose — and Gordon sneaks up on their investigation. Not surprisingly, he digs himself into deeper messes, while the detectives circle around the same swamp. At times it's hard to tell the good guys and their guilt from Gordon and his shame ... except Gordon's making worse mistakes because he's so darn scared. 

If you cut your reading teeth on Los Angeles noir, or Donald Westlake's series under his Richard Stark pen name, here's a great chance to step deeper (or, considering Gordon, higher) and grab the bitter disillusionment of modern police challenges and the messy choices that power provides. Oh, and that title? Think a Zippo lighter ... and all the steamy and screwed up moments likely to follow that scratched flint.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

New Bibliomystery: THE DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, Eva Jurczyk

Poisoned Pen Press has cleverly caught a new bibliomystery, written by a Toronto librarian and book reviewer. In THE DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, Eva Jurczyk offers a glimpse into the high stakes of university funding, and at the same time provides a classic "follow the money" mystery with a strong-getting-stronger protagonist.

Liesl Weiss hasn't been able to get a top position at her university's most prestigious library—the special collections one, with the irreplaceable manuscripts. As an assistant to the amazing Christopher Wolfe, who manages both big-money donors and the collections themselves, she's been under a lot less stress than if she'd been at the top. So she was actually on sabbatical with a year off from responsibilities, when her boss lost the capacity to manage anything: 

Before Christopher's brain had set itself on fire, he had lacked a talent for details and had been reliant on Liesl to keep him to schedules and plans. Which was why ... she had called Christopher three weeks ago to remind him that the combination to the safe was scheduled to be changed. He was supposed to call her back once it was done and tell her the new code because it was prudent to make sure it was stored in more than one place. But Christopher and details being what they were, the call had never come.

Though Liesl can't open the safe for the university president, she quickly comes up with an alternative for that very day, to distract donors with another flashy item. "Another book was what Christopher would have proposed, Liesl was sure of it. As sure as she was that [university president] Garber didn't want a creative solution from Christopher's second-in-command. He wanted Christopher."

Though her distract-the-donors maneuver functions well enough for the moment, she's got to get the priceless manuscript out of that safe. And once the combination is discovered, she expects some relief. Unfortunately, the safe turns out to be empty. Surrounded by colleagues eager to see her fail, with one in particular ready to shove her down any handy staircase of issues, rediscovering the purloined "Plantin Polyglot Bible" is essential for her self-esteem and any hope of keeping the job she's temporarily holding down.

From here on, scholarly intrigue and greed run rampant. Swinging from one fraught situation to the next, Liesl is forced to set aside her mild and bookish approach. At least, in public. In private, in a moldy bathroom in the history department, she'll ball up a wad of paper towels, crush them against her face, and let loose a scream ... then gets back to a truly Sherlockian process of eliminating all possible suspects, until the one left is, let us say: highly improbable. At least, at first glance.

A true bibliomystery, rife with manuscript details and odd end of binding minutiae, is rare enough. Coupling it with a determined and maturing amateur sleuth doubles the achievement. Although this is Jurczyk's debut novel, her many articles and reviews have clearly honed her skills, and the pace is excellent, the writing smooth and exhilarating.

THE DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS will be released January 25, so this is an excellent moment to pre-order a copy for a very good read, indeed.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Legal Thriller from William Deverell Offers Rich Read, Moral Choices, Laugh-Out-Loud Moments

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

 

“Along with its humor, every chapter of Stung offers both the cost of taking moral action, and the deep suspense of being human. “

Stung is the eighth of Canadian author William Deverell’s award-winning Arthur Beauchamp legal thrillers. Dogged by the challenges of his own aging mind—unsure whether he can absorb the details of a case, let alone defend a group of radicals who’ve clearly committed a crime—lawyer Arthur Beauchamp finds himself caught in a tripled disaster. First, there’s the defense of the seven urban radicals who invaded an insecticide factory, to bring attention to the mass deaths of honeybees resulting from its products. Second, his home retreat on an island off Canada’s west coast is under threat from a mining company. And third, he keeps disappointing his politician wife, who’s spending a lot of her time in Toronto and other urban and urbane locales. Oh, and then there’s the dog problem.

Deverell doubles the size of this enjoyable crime-and-defense enterprise to nearly 600 pages by narrating from both Arthur’s point of view and that of one of the defendants, the very clever (if in many ways naive) activist Rivie Levitsky, whose task to prepare for the factory attack was the almost-seduction of one of its managers. (This is one of very few crime novels in which She give He a “roofie,” for extraordinary reasons.) And Rivie is a delight, full of surprises and passion. But it’s Arthur that Deverell presents as the character under most threat, and under demand for personal courage and change.

When he first appears, in the second chapter, he’s not in great shape after stepping on a wasp nest in his pasture: “Arthur Beauchamp is in his underpants, seated, his right foot elevated, an inflated pink balloon, and it hurts like the wrath of God. Thirteen stab would fir which a cold pack, calamine, and baking soda offer not a tittle of relief. … Arthur used to don his gown for occasional courtroom forays, always scuttling back to his sanctum sanctorum with great heaves of relief. That’s history. Let his record of thirty-six straight wins be his legacy.”

His intent has been to retire, continue his island paradise, love his dog. But the dog dies and gets replaced by an enormous and spirited Irish wolfhound that can’t stay out of trouble; paradise gets invaded by commerce; and the only ally he has who’s capable of rescuing his home is a lawyer who’s involved with the arrested activists and maneuvers Arthur into a swap: One will save the island, and the other will do his best to save the activists (who, in the name of “all publicity is good publicity,” are already proclaiming their “criminal actions” as utterly necessary to save the globe).

Despite its length, it’s almost impossible to put down Stung—Arthur and Rivie are warmly likeable, doing their best to stand up for their moral imperatives, despite the way they stumble: Arthur from aging (can he re-engage his courtroom dynamism if he can’t recall names anymore?), and Rivie from impulsiveness and at times terror. The threats are well portrayed, the action quickly paced, and the stakes enormous. Plus, Deverell provides word-play and humor in moments like this one, when Arthur narrowly avoids yielding to a neighbor’s seductive offer:

“Now, in the bathroom, standing under a hot, cleansing torrent, aghast that he’d skirted so close to a disaster of orgasmic magnitude, hardly able to fathom how, God knows how, he’d found enough strength to deny the primitive urgings of his id, desperate to believe he had not encouraged what nearly happened, feeling shame but still flushed and quivering with carnal heat, Arthur takes matters into his own hands.”

But of course, there’s also courtroom drama, and continued backsplash of crime and threat for the defendants, from both the corporation they assaulted and their public. Along with its humor, every chapter of Stung offers both the cost of taking moral action, and the deep suspense of being human. Shelve this one in the “read it twice” section, for good fun and thoughtful provocation around what it will take to save the planet and its best people.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.   

Brief Mention: THIRST FOR JUSTICE, Medical and Environmental Thriller by David R. Boyd

Canadian author David R. Boyd has an interesting background for his fiction: A UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, and an associate professor of law, policy, and sustainability (University of British Columbia), his online presence features nine works of nonfiction, almost entirely environmental.

In his debut thriller, THIRST FOR JUSTICE, Boyd presents a trauma surgeon struggling to meet overwhelming health care needs in the Congo. Michael McDougall is gifted in the operating room -- but like the other volunteers for the fictional International Medical Assistance Foundation, he's seeing casualties that result from simple needs for food and clean water. By the end of the first chapter, we also know he's a desperate risk taker on behalf of his patients, opening up his own blood vessel to create an emergency blood transfusion.

But it's the events of the next chapter that turn his mind, soul, and life inside-out. Caught out on the road by a merciless crew of Mai Mai brigands, he sees his driver murdered, his colleague raped, and he can't shake the notion that his own "by the book" response to a demand for money has resulted in these horrors. Sent home to America to recuperate from the trauma, he instead spirals into both posttraumatic stress disorder and the conviction that he can hold the US government to ransom and "make" it pay for clean water for destitute populations.

Boyd presents a neat plot possibility for Michael's threat to his country, and the plan initially works smoothly. But then things twist far out of shape, as both corruption and brutality in the halls of power distort Michael's intended results and turn him into an international criminal.

Although Boyd is a skillful narrator, his shifts among points of view and his portraits of power both suffer from his lack of expertise in this field. The book's ending is also a bit hard to buy into. Then again, Michael Crichton's books had similar issues, and look how people have enjoyed those, anyway!

If you are collecting Canadian mystery authors, or environmental thrillers, THIRST FOR JUSTICE belongs on your shelf. Since Boyd's fiction craft is still a work in progress, this won't make a casual gift book -- but on the other hand, it's always exciting to snag a debut where there's a good chance the author's going to continue to mature and deepen. This is one of those opportunities.

Published by ECW Press of Toronto. 

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Crime Fiction from Canada: RUNNING FROM THE DEAD, Mike Knowles

Other than Louise Penney's work, books by Canadian authors are often slow to reach the US. I was glad to receive (from ECW Press) a copy of the eighth book by Mike Knowles, RUNNING FROM THE DEAD, for review this season. The book came out in June, and it's well worth tracking down via bookstore order on an online retailer.

Private investigator Sam Jones has spent six years searching for an abducted 8-year-old. He's taken plenty of other cases during that time but hunting for Ruth Verne's child never left his priority list, and he regularly reports in to the grieving but ever-hopeful mom.

What he certainly never expected was losing his own tight control upon discovering what had happened to the child and confronting the perpetrator. As Jones starts to face his own shattering reaction, he believes he has only a short time—maybe days—before he'll have to answer for what he's done, to the police and the justice system.

So when he finds a cryptic pair of scrawls in a coffee-shop bathroom that sound like they're from a girl or young woman being held captive, his inner clock starts ticking: If he couldn't save Ruth Verne's son, can he at least rescue someone else's daughter?

Of course it's more complicated than that, and more horrifying, too, as Jones digs into the worst corners of his city on the hunt for the young victim who's asked for help. 

And he can't get away from what the young women's former foster mom says to him:

Norah wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. "You're not here for her. You're here for you."

"Yes," Jones said.

"You're here for hope."

Jones nodded.

Norah took two fists of his coat. "I don't care if you're not here for her. I don't care, because you think you can bring her back. She's still out there and you think you can bring her back. Please—please bring her back to me."

"I'll try."

"Do better than that. Promise me."

Jones gently took hold of Norah's hands and pulled her fists away from his chest. "This world hates promises. All I can do is try."

Knowles leavens the plot by including some unforgettable characters, from the barista willing to pitch in, to an aging reprobate doing his best to cast off his daughter's efforts to make him go straight. RUNNING FROM THE DEAD swerves back and forth between emotion and action, with tight twists of plot and highly satisfying surprises. 

It may have taken a while to get hold of a Mike Knowles crime novel—but now I'll be watching hard for more. And by the way, if you need a comparable to think about ... think Travis McGee, but even better.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Is This Our Future? AGENCY from William Gibson

[originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

“As for all really important worldmaking, the key to the power of Agency is not the imaginative twists of computers, software, or politics, but what people do for the sake of those they care about, and those who care about them. Even if the one caring is clearly a piece of software. ”

For suspense readers, “agency” is shorthand for the CIA. But Agency in William Gibson’s speculative creation goes far beyond an intense, suspenseful thriller—it’s the intro to a new world, one in which crime and criminals, whether government-hired or corporate or “mob,” test the boundaries of how to shape the future. And maybe even the past.

The book begins simply enough: A software tester, better known these days as a beta tester, takes on an assignment for a San Francisco-area company, after a couple of years of unemployment. Verity Jane (Jane’s her last name) believes the parent company is “in gaming.”

But when Verity powers up the augmented reality (AR) set she’s taken home to test, it—or she, Eunice—clearly has capacities well beyond the expected. In fact, Verity’s first notable action is to ditch the AR gear and retreat to the bathroom, to make a private call to the CEO who’d hired her. “‘Is this for real? … Just tell me there’s not someone somewhere doing Eunice, for my benefit?’”

The moment that Verity starts digging in to test Eunice’s capabilities for herself, readers leap from the West Coast to somewhere in Britain. The second chapter of the book actually springs farther than that in terms of worldmaking, though: Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer, striding along beside a freelance investigator she’s pulling back onto a case, is reflecting on the terminology for chunks of the past, called “stubs,” that people in her system are able to initiate. Except they’re more like branches, pieces of continuity forking away from the recorded past, to expose potential futures where government and society may vary radically.

Inevitably, these two strands of narrative meet, and swiftly. Government in the future insists on seeking out Eunice’s origins and intent, although it will be a long time in the lives of all the protagonists before the British manipulations begin to make sense and have effects, positive or negative. At least at first, it seems Verity Jane is in a kinder, better world than DI Lowbeer and her hired hand, Nethercott. Eunice, who identifies as African American, claims to be eight hours old. In turn, Verity’s thirty-three.

“‘Jesus year,’ said Eunice, ‘thirty-three.’

‘You religious?’

‘It just means time to get your shit together.’

There was a looseness to this beyond [Verity’s] experience of chatbots, but a wariness as well.”

Soon Verity and Eunice move beyond talking about movies and apps, and Verity’s reputation as an “app whisperer” turns out to hide a deep and intelligent loneliness that Eunice mitigates. Can we say that Verity matters to Eunice, just because Eunice makes sure Verity gets the breakfast she needs, or finds important items already packed when it’s time to run? Without Verity—and there’s clearly no frivolousness in Gibson’s choice of this name—can Eunice achieve what she/it intends to? How much will the British interfere, and if there’s really a risk of nuclear war behind all of this, will Eunice’s existence affect that risk? Can the British team affect it?

As for all really important worldmaking, the key to the power of Agency is not the imaginative twists of computers, software, or politics, but what people do for the sake of those they care about, and those who care about them. Even if the one caring is clearly a piece of software.

And that title, Agency? Here’s the first definition from one dictionary: “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power.” Much like Gibson’s world-shaping debut novel Neuromancer (1984), Agency points with creative and incisive interest toward the choices that portend. We’ll be fortunate if the human journey of non-artificial reality gives us artificial intelligence as significant and generous as Eunice—with worldmaking agency to follow. 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Paranormal Mystery, DECEPTIONS, "A Cainsville Novel," Kelley Armstrong

The third novel in Canadian fantasy author Kelley Armstrong's Cainsville Series came my way this month, and it's a fast-paced thriller -- with the complication of two competing teams being Welsh mystical beings, one "fae" (not the sweet kind of fairy; picture instead carnival roustabouts), and the other "Huntsmen," drawn to the wild in the form of forests, animals, and their own lives.

At the center of a mythic confrontation between the two, however, is something more familiar to mystery readers: Olivia Taylor-Jones, strong woman equally capable with switchblade or firearm, delving into the crimes that her birth parents seem to have committed. Serial murders, to be precise.

And from there, despite paranormal forces and a generations-in-the-making competition between two suitors, two peoples, and one smart woman, there's a traditional crime investigation between the covers of DECEPTIONS. Olivia's determination to pry the truth from her birth parents and the people intervening is aided by her loyal defense-attorney friend Gabriel and her equally loyal lover Ricky, who's the heir-apparent of a major motorcycle gang with illegal enterprises and an antiquated code of ethics that frames women as belongings.

Obviously that's not going to fit Olivia. But she's self-confident enough to play along when it's necessary, as she figures out what Ricky's obligations to his own family are, and what the powerful attraction is between the two of them.

If the paranormal aspects were crucial to Olivia unfolding the secrets around her, or to her decisions about her life, I wouldn't pass along word of this book. But in fact, they're not -- they're the ethnic wallpaper for background. Consider this passage:

The dealership visit lifted Gabriel's mood immensely. I think my handling of the situation amused him. While I'd been following in the career footsteps of my philanthropist mother, I really was Daddy's girl. My father had turned the family business -- the Mills & Jones department store -- back into the Chicago landmark it'd been in the fifties, and he hadn't done that by letting salespeople tell him he couldn't get stock in until next month.

We had an hour before our appointment with Chandler, so Gabriel decided to swing by the office. ... It is relatively close to the Cook County jail. Given Gabriel's clientele, that may be the main attraction.

Nothing remotely "Harry Potter" about that passage, right? And Olivia's choices and actions are just as solid and strong and adult as all that. Consider this a crime fiction parallel to Diana Gabaldon's Outworlder series, with a bit more capability and friendship and a bit less graphic sexuality. A bit.

I enjoyed DECEPTIONS a lot. Maybe not quite enough to go out and search for the two preceding books in the series, Omens and Visions (those do sound a bit more magic-focused, don't they?). But I like Olivia, or Liv, very much, and I think Armstrong -- better known for her dozens of fantasy novels -- has a solid series going here. I would read the next one, and expect to enjoy it. Diversity is the spice of the reading life ... even for crime fiction.

New on This Week's Bookshelf: Neggers, Child, French, Turner, and Briefly, Penny

I purchased these and they came by mail this week, so count on reviews over the next few weeks -- I'm also working on a stack of advance review copies of other titles, and I'll probably interleave the two categories. But I wanted to let you know what I picked up most recently:

HARBOR ISLAND by Carla Neggers. Few realize this gifted author of romantic suspense is a Vermonter ... her multiple series span several police forces and take place on two continents. This one features Sharpe and Donovan. I always know a new Carla Neggers mystery means a deft plot twist, likeable sleuths, and a satisfying ending. I buy these "for me."

But I also can't resist Lee Child's Jack Reacher series -- where the pace drives me into staying up half the night, and Reacher has just enough honor and vulnerability to keep me wanting to know more. So I've picked up PERSONAL. Can hardly wait. (US cover on left, UK on right.)

The most depth and provocative ideas are sure to come in the Tana French book in my stack, THE SECRET PLACE. French rotates protagonists in her Dublin Murder Squad series and makes it clear how directly the crimes and sins of the past impact the present.

Which leads me to my fourth acquisiton: from poet and Iraq war veteran Brian Turner, the new memoir, MY LIFE AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY. Dave and I are already gently competing on who gets to read this one first -- we're passionate about Turner's writing, and the way he shows us both war and the human heart. No, it's not a mystery ... unless you count the enjoyable investigation of how Turner carries revelation and suspense and meaning into his pages.

Now, back to those other books I've already savored and want to mention -- oh yes, one more quick tidbit. I've changed my mind about something I mentioned a couple of weeks ago: I'm not going to review Louise Penny's new Armand Gamache mystery, THE LONG WAY HOME, in any detail. I think Penny dropped a lot of items in this one that should have been woven more effectively into the book, and I'm not happy with the way she tipped a crime into a book that otherwise reads as a series of personal investigations into art and creativity. Fans of the series -- and I am definitely a fan! -- will want this anyway for the sake of the Three Pines characters, but I think it's best viewed as a draft of a better book she could have written. Those who explore her website or follow her newsletters know she's had a hard year personally, and I tip my hat to her for completing her work within the yearly publishing schedule that her fame now demands. Everyone deserves a "pass" at least once in a writing career, and I'll let this book slide without further comment.

Intriguing Radio Interviews with Louise Penny: "There Is No Peace Without Courage"

If you'd like to hear Louise Penny discussing her new August 26 release, The Long Way Home, here are two links:

-- The NPR interview that aired this morning: click here.

-- The CBC interview that aired Saturday morning: click here. (My favorite quote from Louise: "There is no peace without courage.")

And of course, we hope you'll enjoy our notes from Saturday afternoon's pre-release launch party in Brome Lake, Quebec: here.

Brava, Louise!

Louise Penny and Brome Lake Books, A Rare Partnership

Yesterday Dave and I drove eagerly north, across the border into Canada, for the pre-release book party for Louise Penny's new Armand Gamache investigation, A LONG WAY HOME. I'll write about the book later -- today I'll share some of the event instead, hosted in Louise Penny's home neighborhood by Danny McAuley and Lucy Hoblyn of Brome Lake Books.

There can't be many partnerships of author and local bookshop as close as the one that Louise and Danny and Lucy share. Louise tucks bits of description of the shop into her Three Pines books; Danny and Lucy provide a special section of their shop in honor of this author, complete with a pair of comfortable reading chairs and an inscribed book table, as well as the cozy wall decor shown here.

And the respect and intelligent understanding between Louise Penny and Danny McAuley was especially evident in yesterday's on-stage conversation, where Danny asked the questions and Louise provided thoughtful responses that kept us riveted. Here are some examples:

[Danny recalled listening on the radio on the day when Louise announced her departure from a 20-year career at CBC, the Canadian national radio broadcasting firm.] Louise, smiling: "I don't think it's a complete coincidence that I spent 20 years at CBC and went on to write about murder. I also think the more screwed up you are, the better writer you are -- again, the CBC came in handy." She then turned serious and spoke of the "amazing acts of forgiveness" that she also witnessed in that job.

[Danny probed her time and efforts with research.] "A lot of it is good luck, I have to say, or grace." But it also involves following chains of interesting information. For example, the mention of the "Balm in Gilead" in Penny's new book was originally based on her visceral reaction to a long prayer expressed by a father in Marilynne Robinson's literary novel Gilead. But then she heard the hymn "There Is a Balm in Gilead" chanted, and it moved her in a new way. "I heard it when I needed to hear it, and I made note of it." The results are in the pages.

[Danny noted the use of a Canadian artist's work for the book jacket and asked about her connections to art and her research in that area.] Penny immediately confessed that her own upbringing focused on books, not art -- which instead comes into her life through her husband Michael, who is both an artist and a well-educated art appreciator. She watches her husband look at art, and listens hard to how he speaks of what he sees. "And that's what I write about -- I write about the emotions that art invokes, not about art itself."

[Likewise, Penny borrows her cooking expertise through both book research and the people around her.] "I don't cook -- at all, as Michael will tell you -- but I love eating, and I love food." So she writes with cookbooks around her, as well as poetry. "I want the books to be sensuous."

[What about the wonderful way in which significant bits of earlier books in her series come up in later titles and turn out to be related to the underlying plot?] "There are bits in Still Life [the first Armand Gamache investigation] and others that don't come to fruition until much later." But it isn't always because Penny planned it that way -- she also goes back to earlier books looking for details that she notes with "Oh, I could use this!"

[Danny's pursuit of what lies under this newest book led to Louise's reflections:] "The Long Way Home is really inspired initially by Homer's The Odyssey." She went back to re-read it, contemplating "the hero's journey" in it, as well as in her own high school love for Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In the newest book, Clara the artist persuades Gamache to help her try to find her missing husband Peter, and, says Penny, "the search for Peter is most of all the search for ourselves."

Many thanks to Danny, Lucy, and their team, as well as author Louise Penny, for an amazing afternoon. (Looking for a signed copy of the new book? Watch our ABE listings (link in right-hand column); Dave will be adding some this evening, and more on Monday and Tuesday, with the book's official release on August 26. Or, of course, you could treat yourself to a trip to Canada to visit Brome Lake Books -- where, Danny admits, lost wanderers sometimes arrive, looking for Penny's fictional town of Three Pines. They are pretty close together!)

Enjoyable Canadian Traditional Mysteries: Vicki Delany Keeps Writing More!

In April, Vicki Delany's new "Rapid Reads" novella Juba Good will take one of her RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police -- a.k.a. Mounties) investigators to the Sudan. And that will make an enormous change from her usual northern Canada series! But she'll also be releasing Under Cold Stone in April, as the next book featuring Constable Molly Smith in British Columbia. Her recent title More Than Sorrow was an outlier, a Gothic novel (still involving crime, though) set in Ontario. And she scooped up an 2013 Arthur Ellis Award nomination for her "Rapid Reads" novella A Winter Kill.

So amidst the swirl of change (and broadening) for this author, her December 2013 title, GOLD WEB, delighted me with its classic "amateur sleuth" plot and reliably interesting protagonist -- the indominatable Fiona MacGillivray, half owner of the best dance hall and tavern in the gold-rush frontier town of Dawson City, Yukon, in 1898.

This is the third in the Fiona MacGillivray series -- the others are Gold Mountan and Gold Digger -- and "Fee" is well established as a tough, independent businesswoman who's more interested in turning a steady profit and keeping her growing son Angus on the right track, than she is in trying to get her budding romance defined with Corporal Richard Sterling of the Mounties. When a dying man collapses at her feet in an alley behind the dance hall, Fee is startled to hear the man's last words: her name, MacGillivray, followed by the name of the most famous Scottish battle, gasping, "Culloden."

It doesn't make any sense. And with no evident threat toward herself or her business from the murder, Fee leaves the investigation in the hands of Corporal Sterling (and incidentally her son Angus, who's determined to get into law enforcement himself -- heaven forbid). She has a dancer in rebellion, another dancer putting her business in jeopardy, some gambling clients getting out of line, and each time the investigation takes a fresh turn, Fee's own secrets come a little closer to being revealed.

Delany's history-turned-fiction is well checked against fact. Better yet, she's a storyteller who deftly pulls together the plusses and minuses of women's independence, Yukon tradition, and of course the Mounties. Fiona MacGillivray is already a classic character, and her gutsy participation in Gold Rush life makes a great winter read. (My only gripe on this one is the cover design, which doesn't begin to hint at the rough-and-tumble mystery inside.)

Thanks, Vicki Delany -- and I'm looking forward to the April reads, too.

Armand Gamache #9: HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN, Louise Penny

Canadian author Louise Penny has pleaded with readers: Don't reveal too much about this book to others. A lot of threads are being woven, snipped, accentuated, resolved ... leave it to the next reader to discover all the complexity of this ninth in her amazing and compelling Chief Inspector Gamache mystery.

So here's a bit of Q&A instead:

1. Does the book take Gamache back to the Canadian Eastern Townships village of Three Pines, with its eccentric residents and its isolation from the rest of the world? Yes, absolutely -- although Gamache makes more trips back to the Sureté office than he's ever done before, revealing a new talent for rapidly driving himself to locations where he can follow up possible clues to what's rotten in his investigative organizaton.

2. Are there major roles for wild but insecure artist Clara Morrow and her husband Peter? One yes, one no. But Olivier and Gabri deliver both comfort and decisive action. And crazy poet Ruth Zardo abuses them all wonderfully with her acerbic tongue and her twisted sense of humor.

3. Is there a new set of characters that's important? Well, the non-Three-Pines investigation that leads off the story relates to the death of the last of a set of famous quintuplets -- yes, Penny had the Dionne quints in mind at first, but invented the rest (see her note at the end of the book) -- and Penny's portrayal of late-life Constance Pineault and her moment of self-discovery in Three Pines is poignant and memorable. I ended up wanting to visit Constance's grave (pinch, pinch -- these people are NOT real, hard to believe when they are portrayed with such nuance).

4. Do you need to read the other books by Penny before starting this one? For the first time ever, I'm answering YES. You don't actually have to read all eight of the preceding books, but at least start with The Brutal Telling (number 5) and work forward from there. Otherwise you won't appreciate the many forms of heroic choice taking place in the book.

5. (The question asked by all Louise Penny mystery addicts) Will there be more? Oh, you know this answer -- the author has repeatedly said she doesn't ever picture stopping the series! She has a great website and regular monthly newsletters (http://www.louisepenny.com), well worth reading. Plus, I saw at least two major threads here that insist on another book. So, no matter what you think you're seeing for Gamache, have faith -- I am quite sure there are more to come, and knowing Penny's work pattern, I'm also sure she's working on the next. But I refuse to speculate on who will be doing what, where!

So clear a couple of days on the calendar, pick up a copy of HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN, and satisfy your curiosity, as well as that very human hunger to see how "real" people work their way through terrifying problems and whether happiness can be retrieved after disasters.

Oh, the title? It's from a Leonard Cohen song, "Anthem." Read it all, here. You'll have a better idea of where Armand Gamache is going ... and why.