Big Smoke murders point to bigger picture

Two murdered teens, a strangled sex worker, corrupt and aggressive cops, a morally bankrupt mayor, undercover real estate deals and a city on edge during a long hot summer — this is the volatile mixture that Don Gillmor concocts in his detective noir novel Cherry Beach.

A Toronto writer and editor, Gillmor won the Governor General’s award for non-fiction for his memoir To the River, written in memory of his late brother David. Cherry Beach is his fifth novel; he has also written nine children’s books, has won 12 National Magazine Awards and was senior editor at the Walrus.

In Cherry Beach, Gillmor serves up a tense tale with numerous twists. Toronto Police detective Jamieson Abel is on a mission to solve the three murders while also digging down to reveal dirty dealings linking Toronto politicians, criminals and crooked cops in the city’s high-stakes real estate market.

The book opens with Abel and his partner, Davis, who is the division’s only woman of colour, responding to the call after the teens’ bodies are discovered in an apartment in St. James Town. The two friends were promising athletes and good students, both stabbed to death; the only possible suspect identified is 21-year-old Delroy Staples, the boyfriend of the older girl.

The division’s superintendent, a longtime cop now counting the days until retirement, pairs Abel and Davis with two veteran cops who Abel doesn’t like or trust. He knows the two don’t think twice about using physical force on suspects taken to isolated locations such as Cherry Beach. As public pressure mounts, a city-wide manhunt for Staples begins.

Abel certainly has no friends among his peers. He dropped out of law school to care for his mother when she was dying of cancer. His decision to enter the police force isn’t explained, but he’s come to view his superintendent and fellow officers with disdain. He knows he was purposely partnered with Davis, as the two of them are outliers in their division — Abel goes to work each day expecting to be fired for insubordination.

A loner in his personal life too, Abel’s main hobby is buying high-priced ingredients to prepare elaborate meals paired with the best wines he can afford. Gillmor devotes a lot of ink to detailing his protagonist’s culinary forays.

After the body of Infinity, a transgender sex worker, is found strangled with an expensive silk tie, Abel visits the exclusive suburb of Rosedale to see a former city councillor. Titus Bishop owes him a favour; 12 years earlier, Abel had discovered him stoned in a limo with two sex workers who had been beaten, yet no charges were laid. Upon seeing Bishop again, Abel reckons the elderly man wouldn’t have been physically capable of killing Infinity.

While the crime rate is falling in most parts of the Greater Toronto Area, St. James Town is an anomaly, with the recent three-month rate standing at a level six times higher than a decade prior. With the largest high-rise community in the country, built in the ’60s, St. James Town now houses more than 18,000 residents, about two-thirds of which are immigrants. These residents are economically trapped in their crumbling buildings as rents in more desirable areas skyrocket.

The buildings might be deteriorating, but Abel knows the large chunk of land on which the development is situated holds enormous value. He works to figure out the true ownership of this property and how the murders, and St. James Town’s current crime spree, might all be pieces of a larger picture.

In Cherry Beach, Gillmor draws on his personal knowledge of Toronto’s history and social tensions existing within Canada’s largest and most ethnically diverse metropolitan area. Abel is a flawed character, yet one who wishes to restore some justice to the lives of those citizens who keep the city functioning.

Andrea Geary is a freelance writer in Selkirk.