SUSPENSE: Colonial murder mystery a doozy
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/09/2015 (3996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Young English lawyer/naturalist Chad Hobbes sails for five months to the distant colony of 1869 Victoria, where the only work he can get is as a copper.
It’s a sprawling mudhole of competing and conniving hierarchies of British, Americans, expansionist Canadians, Chinese and even more-diverse indigenous people. There are lots of recognizable historical figures and familiar streets.
In Sean Haldane’s terrific The Devil’s Making (Minotaur Books, 368 pages, $25), a weird American doctor gets butchered, and all evidence points to a native chief as the murderer — but Hobbes, it goes without saying, has his doubts. This is neuropsychologist Haldane’s first novel, and it’s a doozy.
***
It’s flashback time to early cases of ultra-morose loner Icelandic cop Erlendur Sveinnson in Arnaldur Indridason’s Oblivion (Seeker Books, 345 pages, $28).
It’s 1980, and a young Icelander found murdered in a lava-fed hot spring may have been killed on the nearby massive U.S. military base. But is it more sinister than black-market smuggling gone wrong?
Meanwhile, compelled by his brother’s disappearance in a blizzard when they were children, Erlendur embarks obsessively on yet another missing-person cold case — a teenage girl who left for school, never to be seen again.
A better-than-average chapter in the above-average series.
***
A psycho is terrorizing Northern California by manipulating crises at crowded places to send people into deadly panic.
State cop Kathryn Dance’s sleuthing thing in Jeffrey Deaver’s Solitude Creek (Grand Central, 464 pages, $28) is reading body language fluently, and the villain soon makes her interest in him personal — even if he never says, “Hello, Clarisse,” you get his drift.
Meanwhile, gangbangers are running heavy weapons into Mexico, Dance has a complicated love life and even more complicated kids, and there seem to be as many law enforcement agencies in internecine power duels as there are suspects.
Deaver has a few too many “gotcha!” moments with readers, but still, a very decent read.
***
Two people with a mysterious lack-of-a-past get murdered in their rural Quebec farmhouse during a snowstorm — the same storm-killing modus operandi as a series of murders in the United States.
The FBI somehow decides retired Montreal cop Emile Cinq-Mars is the ideal investigator; he’s soon sleuthing around New Orleans’ French Quarter as bodies pile up and the law enforcement agencies in both countries trip over each other. It will, of course, resolve back in the snows of Quebec.
John Farrow’s The Storm Murders (Minotaur Books, 312 pages, $30) is a ripping good read, though the explanation from the villain, when it finally comes, is really, really complex — to quote Eli Wallach, when you have the drop on someone, “Don’t talk. Shoot.”
***
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before — in Jo Nesbo’s Blood on Snow (Knopf, 224 pages, $23), a hit man falls in love with his intended target.
Nesbo usually writes grim mysteries featuring messed-up Norwegian cop Harry Hole, but here’s a stand-alone in which Oslo’s top hit man gets an assignment from his heroin kingpin boss to murder the gangster’s wife. You’ll never guess what happens next.
It’s all about bad things happening to awful people.
Const. Chad Hobbes would have been right at home in some of Free Press education reporter Nick Martin’s favourite 19th-century Victoria pubs.
Nick Martin
Former Free Press reporter Nick Martin, who wrote the monthly suspense column in the books section and was prolific in his standalone reviews of mystery/thriller novels, died Oct. 15 at age 77 while on holiday in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
SUSPENSE
Nick Martin
Former Free Press reporter Nick Martin, who wrote the monthly suspense column in the books section and was prolific in his standalone reviews of mystery/thriller novels, died Oct. 15 at age 77 while on holiday in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Advertisement Advertise With Us
Advertisement Advertise With Us
History
Updated on Saturday, September 12, 2015 8:40 AM CDT: Formatting, adds book jacket.
