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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Novel uses Pickton case as stepping stone

Reviewed by: Maureen Scurfield

Posted: 07/12/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Finding Carrie George

By Frank LaRue

Totem Pole Books, 234 pages, $19

COMING to market just as serial killer Robert Pickton is back looking for an appeal, B.C. author Frank LaRue's mystery plucks at sore heartstrings.

LaRue, a senior columnist and associate editor with First Nations Drum, was one of the first writers to break the story of the missing aboriginal Eastside Vancouver women.

In this fiction based on real-life events, the title character's despondent parents hire P.I. Mike Morningstar to find their daughter, missing from the Vancouver drug and prostitution scene for one harrowing year.

The aboriginal ex-RCMP takes the case, and the emerging storylines alternate between Vancouver and Winnipeg.

Not for the faint-hearted, this Pickton-esque fiction sometimes feels like a fleshed-out police report, strong on gory detail and short on character development, but the plot is strong and compelling.

At the same time Morningstar starts digging for leads, two more Vancouver Eastside prostitutes get into a truck with Pickton-like character Bill Roberts, and unwittingly take a trip to his death farm. They're hoping to exchange a threesome for fixes of hard drugs.

Predictably, Roberts gets angry with the women, and the scene turns ugly. One woman, Kim, makes an escape, while hearing the screams of her friend Mona being stabbed to death in the barnyard.

Roberts chases after Kim, who could expose this murder, and bring the police to the farm where he keeps the bodies. He retains the help of henchman Sebastian (The Blade) Garcia, who once spent $100,000 buying Roberts out of jail for a multiple-woman kill in South America.

Then Morningstar discovers Carrie has become closely connected to Sebastian and is possibly still alive in Winnipeg. He and sidekick, Pontiac Dumont (a musician), invade Winnipeg's hidden high-roller track and the finale plays out in private clubs, mansions and Winnipeg streets.

Take your cutesy-wutesy ideas about Winnipeg and chuck them. Winnipeg's monied underworld, as portrayed by LaRue, may be smaller than Vancouver's, but still has the cutthroat "security," mobsters, fancy hidden clubs and hit men who relish their bloody work.

In the mix are top-line, beautiful, pill-popping women like Carrie who fear for their lives, at the hands of the same powerful men who bed them, gift them to mob bosses, and hire them out through their massage parlours.

LaRue's style is a combo of cops-eye detail and believable tough dialogue -- a natural for screen adaptation. As there's little comic relief in Finding Carrie George, fans of gumshoe repartée artists like Robert Parker may not stick it out to the end. That would be a mistake. It is well worth the read.

LaRue's first novel, Innocent Until Proven Indian, is based on a true story where three non-native men get away with raping a 12-year-old aboriginal girl. It provides background to Mike Morningstar's disenchantment with the justice system and would be a good companion piece when reading his new novel.

Maureen Scurfield writes the Free Press's Miss Lonelyhearts advice column.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 12, 2009 B8

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