Little sleuthing to be found in latest Kilbourn novel

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This article was published 13/01/2024 (1010 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s difficult to maintain a reputation as the queen of Canadian crime fiction when your latest book lacks one vital ingredient — Canadian crime fiction.

Gail Bowen, Regina author of The Legacy, the 22nd book in the Joanne Kilbourn mystery series, has been shifting for some time now from murder mysteries spiced with the personal life of Joanne Shreve, her husband Zack Shreve and their staggering horde of Saskatchewan family and friends, to greater attention to their personal tales that have an ever-diminishing element of mystery.

The shift is all but complete — it is only in the last 20 pages of The Legacy that anything remotely resembling Canadian crime fiction suddenly appears. It’s unfair to divulge if the book is a murder mystery.

Bowen’s legion of fans loves Kilbourn’s network and her faithful readers will be delighted with the vast array of weddings, first days of school, gatherings, socially acceptable wooing (requited or otherwise), arrivals of new puppies, more gatherings, births, successes and dreams fulfilled. So often will people be left choking back tears or the air silent in the aftermath of someone’s expressing passionately overwhelming gratitude.

So often.

For first-time readers who may feel lost and perplexed by the absence of the murder mystery they expected, Joanne Kilbourn has been an academic, political strategist and amateur sleuth. For nine years in the book’s timeline she’s been Joanne Shreve, married to Zack, a former Regina mayor, senior partner in Regina’s most powerful law firm and a wheelchair user.

Joanne and Zack head up Regina’s bourgeois elite, anchored in the law firm, whose members have even murdered to protect it.

Her fans find Joanne caring and generous — she may also be seen as a busybody who controls everyone’s life. Indeed, rarely does anything happen unless Zack and Joanne sign off for the people who constantly seek their attention and approval.

In The Legacy, one of the Shreves’s children is marrying a woman who is estranged from her father, a nasty piece of work who is considered one of Canada’s greatest current authors on the basis of two extraordinary novels. The books appeared after years of writer’s block following his first three mediocre books, none of which suggested he was capable of these two bestsellers.

As the wedding nears, evidence of plagiarism becomes ever more scandalous.

Meanwhile, someone else in the Shreve circle has just written a 500-page biography of aforesaid author, but skipped any hint of plagiarism. Your book club can discuss Joanne’s assertion that it’s okay to leave out the bit about his greatest works being stolen from another writer.

Also popping up a few sporadic times is someone imprisoned for two murders in the murky past — murders connected to the journalism school at which Joanne taught, murders she might have prevented.

Even less does it pop up that Zack has to fire a junior partner in his law firm. Maybe someone who will not react graciously? It’s happened before.

But that’s it, those are the elements that could develop into a mystery. Could — no guarantees.

Winnipeg radio people may be intrigued to learn from journalism prof Joanne and her national radio show son-in-law that they should conduct pre-interviews so that interview subjects know what questions are coming; and if they tape for later broadcast, let their subjects delete whatever they wish.

And meanwhile, we have the adventures of Joanne and Zack’s inner circle: exes galore, multiple marriages all around, divorces, deaths, widows and widowers, adoptions, half-siblings, step-siblings, orphans from the storm, sperm donors, a wide range of genders and races, DNA-testing-surprise-families, new relationships, grandchildren beyond count, guess-who’s-your-biological-parent.

Women, no matter how strong and independent, always seem to take their husband’s name. The mortality rate is astonishing.

As for being the queen of Canadian crime fiction, the book cover of The Legacy proclaims that the Winnipeg Free Press bestowed that title on Bowen. The quote is accurate: it was published in a review of Bowen’s 12 Rose Street — in March of 2015.

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin will avoid Regina for a while for suggesting that Louise Penny has been the queen of Canadian crime fiction for a while now. Shari Lapena and Anne Emery aren’t that far behind. Keep your eye on Barbara Fradkin.