Latest Thumps thriller worth its weight in gold

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This article was published 06/01/2024 (988 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One coin — just one coin, one coin that no one claims to have ever seen and which may not even exist — causes so much trouble for Thumps DreadfulWater.

As though his life isn’t in enough turmoil already; now he’s got the aforementioned coin, the Double Eagle of the title, with which to contend.

So much turmoil that Thumps even returns to what he arguably does best, sleuthing with a badge. Deputy sheriff DreadfulWater.

Double Eagle is the seventh Thumps DreadfulWater murder mystery from Canada’s magnificent storyweaver Thomas King, a true delight of a tale.

DreadfulWater is as laconic as ever, and so rooted in his daily existence: diabetes-denying breakfast on the same diner stool with his familiar friends each morning, hanging out with his cats, taking his camera into the Montana wilderness whenever the mood moves him, unable still to commit to a lasting relationship with Claire, his sort-of romantic partner.

And then a coin show comes to the resort on nearby Buffalo Mountain, run by one of his buds and some form of security is needed. Thumps gets talked into favours pretty easily; he’s quite loyal to his friends despite his protestations.

Soon that patch of Montana is crawling with shady characters, none of whom has any apparent reason to be there.

It’s barely a minor-league coin show, so why do six of the world’s most prominent coin dealers show up? Why is the FBI in town, accompanied by DreadfulWater’s mysterious — you’d want that in a mystery, wouldn’t you? — and enigmatically dangerous familiar Cisco, who seems to work for some black ops U.S. government agency of initials known to but a few?

Meanwhile, Claire has vanished, possibly headed for Fort Macleod, Alta., where six-year-old orphan Ivory, whom she was close to adopting, has been taken by a blood relative.

Earth-leaving-its-orbit changes are simultaneously hitting Thumps, who is nowhere near ready.

He’s reluctantly considering going to open houses, should he and Claire and Ivory ever commit, but sees neither her home on the reserve nor his bungalow in town right for any such scenario.

Thumps loves his camera, which actually uses film and requires him to spend hours in a darkroom with smelly chemicals — ask your grandparents. What is this thing thrust into his hand which takes so many photos without film and adjusts itself, and doesn’t need a darkroom?

Once Thumps dons the deputy’s badge, suddenly there’s a cell phone, and a laptop and the internet, though how to use them…

Hands up: does any member of your book club know who Duncan Renaldo was? OK, now those members under 70. Moving on.

Double Eagle is an amazing story of hilarious dialogue, beyond-colourful characters and a crackerjack of a whodunit.

It’s much more than that, of course.

King could overwhelm the reader with a constant polemic about racism and colonialism and poverty — instead, the subtlety is always there, in humour whose truth is in no way humourous, but is all the more powerful for the way Thumps sees the world.

Consider a scene in which a character is simply watching a movie to put in time. It’s Avatar — how casually Thumps reminds us without interrupting the plot that it’s yet another film about a single white guy saving all the natives.

There’s a character raised in foster homes in the book named Scoop Macleod who’s developing a means of tracing the shared ancestry of Indigenous people through physical characteristics. She’s named Macleod because her unknown parents abandoned her in Fort Macleod. She calls herself Scoop because… well, because.

Oh, right, that Double Eagle. It’s a $20 American gold coin so rare that any which exist in private hands would fetch in the range of US$20 million. Is it possible the coin is a clue to calling the book a murder mystery?

But enough of the plot.

Double Eagle is a wonderful read. Absolutely wondrous. Enjoy.

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin would love to hoist himself onto a counter stool at Alvera’s café and listen to Thumps and his friends talk over sausages and hash browns and bottomless coffee.