SUSPENSE: Elegantly crafted novel

When Toronto actor, director and screenwriter Marc Strange turned to mystery writing a few years ago, it might have seemed an after-thought for the co-creator of CBC's longest-running English-language dramatic series, The Beachcombers (1972-1990).

Then his first Joe Grundy novel, Sucker Punch, was nominated for a Canadian Arthur Ellis Award in 2007, and his second, Body Blows, won the U.S. Edgar Award for best paperback original. Clearly, Strange wasn't just slipping into retirement with some busy-work.

It's fitting, then, that Woman Chased by Crows (ECW, 416 pages, $25), published just days before his death from cancer at age 70, is far and away the best Canadian mystery of the year thus far -- vivid, emotionally complex and elegantly crafted.

While the novel is billed as the second "Orwell Brennan mystery," the small-town police chief of Dockerty, Ont. is really just the aw-shucks, down-home conduit for a tale of dirty cops and stolen Russian jewels featuring Brennan's top investigator and her temporary partner, a tough-talking Toronto detective.

Yet it's his intimate portrait of Anya, a mysterious ballet teacher haunted by a past crime not of her making, that crowns this troika of remarkable women, imbuing the author's exit with all the depth, style and panache of his life's work.

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You could shoot off a cannon and not hit anyone in the Providence Journal newsroom after yet another round of layoffs, and Liam Mulligan is reduced to writing obits and covering Rhode Island society events.

Then a child's severed arm shows up in a pig farm, and one of the country's biggest Internet porn kings seems to have the governor's ear at the annual Derby Ball -- just before he goes over a cliff with a bullet in his throat. Or maybe not.

It all makes for a rollicking yarn, peopled with bookies and boxers, pimps and hookers, cranky editors, bent politicians and dubious cops. But more than just another hard-boiled exploit by yet another sassy, street-smart amateur detective, Bruce DeSilva's Cliff Walk (Forge, 320 pages, $29) has some serious cred.

DeSilva spent 40 years in the newspaper business, as an investigative reporter, editor and writing coach. It shows. Mulligan is an old-school digger clawing his way through the morass of Rhode Island's fabled crime and corruption to rage against the dying of his profession's light.

This fine, sad touch of nostalgic poignancy propelled last year's Rogue Island to an Edgar Award for best first crime novel. With Cliff Walk, DeSilva has dodged the sophomore curse, in spades.

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SHORT STROKES

The Ambitious City, by Scott Thornley (Random House, 464 pages, $25): A straight-up, two-pronged policier by the Toronto ad exec, his second featuring Dundurn (read: Hamilton) Det. Superintendent MacNeice.

With biker-war bodies on a farm and several dredged-up, concrete tombs both tied to a lucrative waterfront contract, MacNeice and his crew also have to cope with a slasher targeting successful ethnic women. Seems a bit much to handle, but both MacNeice and Thornley manage it with aplomb.

The Prisoner's Wife, by Gerard Macdonald (Thomas Dunne, 320 pages, $30): For once, the dust cover comparisons with John le Carré aren't just wishful thinking. Hired to find a suspected terrorist renditioned to secret prisons, cashiered CIA agent Shawn Maguire finds himself a pawn in a deadly game played by his former employers, Pakistani power-brokers and the suspect's beautiful but not entirely trustworthy wife.

Macdonald jumps to the top rank of British spy novelists with this turbid, no-good-guys excerpt from the War on Terror.

The Whole Lie, by Steve Ulfelder (Minotaur, 320 pages, $29): It's a gritty, down-and-dirty ride through Massachusetts politics for ex-con auto mechanic Conway Sax when an ex-flame turns up dead soon after telling a rich, would-be lieutenant-governor that he has a six-year-old son. A tasty tale of double-crosses, triple-crosses and sleazy doings, starring a memorable tough-guy underdog.

John Sullivan is editor of the Free Press Autos, Homes and Travel sections and specialty websites.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 9, 2012 J9