Reviewed by Dave Jenkinson
The Brutal Heart
A Joanne Kilbourn Mystery
BY Gail Bowen
McClelland & Stewart, 325 pages, $20
Recently named Canada's best mystery novelist by Reader's Digest, Regina's Gail Bowen demonstrates why she deserves that title as sex, politics and murder become intriguingly entwined in The Brutal Heart, the 11th instalment of her Joanne Kilbourn series.
Now retired from the English department of the First Nations University of Canada, Bowen first introduced Joanne ("Jo") Kilbourn, then a recently widowed 45-year-old political science prof and mother of three, via Deadly Appearances, in 1990.
In The Brutal Heart, Bowen characteristically weaves together seemingly unrelated story threads, in this case the murder of Cristal Avilia, a high-priced Regina escort ($500 per hour, minimum two hours) and the re-election efforts of Ginny Monaghan, a federal cabinet minister and aspirant to the PM's office.
Cristal's death also impacts on Jo's 18-month-old marriage when her wheelchair bound paraplegic lawyer husband, Zack Shreve, admits, "I used her [Cristal's] services, myself, Jo," with his emphasis being on "used."
Though Bowen has referred to the now 56-year-old Joanne as "a reluctant sleuth," the series' title clarifies that her books are not to be confused with detective novels, wherein readers are challenged to solve a crime, usually murder, by using plot-imbedded clues and to do so before the author reveals the killer's identity.
In mysteries, the author simply presents a series of suspects, each having a motive for murder. As a Bowen character cautions, "From my experience, the motivation for most murders is pretty mundane."
The Brutal Heart's cast of suspects initially includes Ginny Monaghan's ex-husband, Jason Brodnitz, who is rumoured to have been living off the avails of prostitution.
The list grows by seven as DVDs, featuring Cristal with one of her clients in flagrante delicto, anonymously appear at the respective johns' homes.
Suspect numbers increase when Cristal's trick list containing "the names of 32 of our city's best and brightest" is sent to the Regina police.
As in the other titles in the Kilbourn series, the killer ultimately outs him or herself to Joanne, again in a situation that puts Joanne's life in jeopardy.
The identity of the "brutal heart" comes as an appropriate surprise, but a re-reading confirms that Bowen has provided several strong hints.
For newcomers to the series, Bowen furnishes enough back-story and antecedent action that The Brutal Heart works well as a stand-alone mystery read.
However, the value-added aspect of the Kilbourn series has always been the engaging, continuing story of Jo and her family to which Bowen added an adopted daughter in the second Kilbourn novel, Murder at the Mendel.
Each volume functions much like a family photo album that contains images of "all the small ceremonies that make up life." Over the last 18 years (11 years in Kilbourn time), Jo has shared the happy and sad events in her personal life as well as those of her growing children, happenings of the kind experienced by typical families (excluding, of course, all the murders).
An absorbing read, The Brutal Heart should lead Kilbourn beginners to the series' other volumes which are all available in paperback, with the first six being divided between two omnibus editions.
Dave Jenkinson is a retired University of Manitoba
professor who cut his crime-lit teeth on
Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown series.
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