Curator’s cadaver washes up on shore

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/12/2023 (1029 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Single mom radio reporter Helene Unger walks every day on Victoria’s magnificent 800-metre Ogden Point Breakwater, gazing out on the Pacific Ocean and snow-capped Olympic Mountains in Washington state — and, one day, at a floating murdered body.

In Jean Paetkau’s Blood on the Breakwater (234 pages, $20), what’s an amateur to do but sleuth the death of a loathsome art gallery curator/failed artist/cheat/all-around scoundrel, all somehow connected to the discovery of two unknown paintings by an Emily Carr-like Victoria painter who vanished without trace in 1886?

Could Helene’s nosiness attract the attention of the killer and place her family in peril? A darned good first adult effort by CBC reporter and children’s book author Jean Paetkau.

● ● ●

Traumatized D.I. Jake has enough of London’s violence and happily moves into his late uncle’s bequest of land, lake and ancient off-the-grid cottage in some of the English countryside.

Any bets that this magnificent land isn’t hiding evil that the Deliverance-level locals conspire to conceal, or that Jake isn’t walking into big-time bucolic Straw Dogs-type trouble, despite the beguiling presence of single mom veterinarian Livia nearby?

Published in April, Death Under A Little Sky (HarperCollins, 352 pages, $25) is a crackerjack of a debut for journalist Stig Abell, slow to build, heavy on characterization and setting, a Jim dandy of a mystery.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

● ● ●

The late Raymond Chandler’s tough but decent private eye Phillip Marlowe gets hired by an abusive, vile, loathsome rich old man to find his heiress runaway daughter somewhere in the sordid underbelly of 1930s LA — full of corrupt, creepy folks.

Scottish murder mystery author Denise Mina takes on the pulp fiction noir gumshoe icon and does an OK job of it in The Second Murderer (Mulholland Books, 256 pages, $35), basically the umpteenth version of The Big Sleep.

There’s abject poverty galore, racism, corruption, Nazi artists, bent cops and good folks popping up to keep us off-balance — the plot is primarily about lesbians forced to lie about who they are to survive.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

● ● ●

Three rich old men control ill-gotten business empires in an idyllic harbour town in Brittany — oopsies, two rich old men, the now-late doctor just fell through an upper floor window and created a ghastly mess.

Jean-Luc Bannalec’s The Body by the Sea (Minotaur Books, 304 pages, $37), originally published in 2019 with an English release this past April, is a decent enough revenge whodunit, with more mayhem to come, a shipyard getting blowed up real good, suspects galore who may have annoyingly changed their names, a real Georges Simenon Maigret novel from 1931 somehow involved and an enticing travelogue throughout.

It doesn’t help that noble hero Commissaire Georges Dupin is a volatile bully who tramples on witnesses’ rights, jumps to wrong conclusions and sees no reason why his police team should have a life outside of work.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

● ● ●

In 1865 York, a train station guard who’s quite the jack-the-lad with all the young women goes into the brake van just before an explosion — so naturally the local constabulary simply arrests the nearest Irishman and worries about finding evidence eventually.

But up from London comes Scotland Yard railway detective Robert Colbeck, who as usual reckons it’s not all that straightforward and sleuths among fascinating characters and all the class levels from abject poverty to the landiest of the landed gentry.

Published in April, Death at the Terminus (Edward Marston, Allison & Busby, 350 pages, $35) is a reliably entertaining Colbeck adventure, with lots of neat stuff for railway and history buffs amid a plethora of likely suspects.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin strongly urges checking the tidal charts before chucking a corpse off the Ogden Point Breakwater. Better yet, drive up-island to open ocean, when the tide is going out.