What do you get when you cross an emergency-room doctor with an award-winning novelist? An insanely-twisted thriller that’s more connected than the vascular system.
White Lightning is book nine in the Hope Sze medical thriller series but reads like a standalone. It was my first Yi read but won’t be my last. The premise is simple—the complications are not.
Think of small things that pack a punch, and you’ve got Dr. Sze. Self-described as “five foot two and a quarter because of her ‘Asian genes’,” Hope is anything but diminutive. (And I have to wonder how much of Melissa Yi runs through the fictional veins of Hope Sze). She refers to herself as an “idiot savant sleuth” and definitely shows off her skills in this story.
When Hope and fellow doctors, Tori Yamamoto and John Tucker, take a weekend away from interning in Montreal, Hope’s platinum-haired fiancé, Tucker, insists they stay at the Rumrunner’s Rest, a historic inn in Windsor, Ontario. The Detroit River was once known as “Hooch Highway” as opportunists took to transporting alcohol across it from Canada into the United States during American Prohibition.
Right from page one, we know something’s up when the pragmatic Tori sees a ghost.
I love blended genres and that’s what’s brewing here—a murder mystery/thriller, with a dash of history, and a supernatural twist. Oh, and spiked with Rogue Con – a motley collection of theatrical villains, a stalker, the appearance of Hope’s recent ex-boyfriend (whom she still loves) AND the gruesome discovery of bones in the basement chimney.
But it’s not all fun and games.
Interwoven into the narrative is the story of orphan Edwin Jenkins, a six-year-old English chimney sweep, forced into servitude and early death. Edwin’s tragic tale is one of horror and exploitation. Later that theme replays with the introduction of a teen prostitute from Rogue Con.
Yi is a witty, playful writer who doesn’t shy away from spiking the text with expletives, sexy innuendos, and shots of pop culture. Her reactions to seeing her ex-boyfriend, in the basement at the unveiling of the mysterious bones, are priceless; in fact, the whole scene, wild rogues and all, is a comic tour-de-force. Twisted riddles on the title, White Lightning, are endless (I’ll let you sleuth them out) and the connections make for a meticulous mind-map. We even read a first-person interview with the original White Lightning who worked with the infamous Al Capone.
Technically the works of a medical crime writer, Yi’s Hope Sze thrillers have been recommended by The Globe and Mail, CBC Books, and The Next Chapter as some of the best Canadian suspense novels.
In this high voltage thriller, Yi weaves a tragic tapestry of exploitation, murder, mayhem, and revenge, spiked with comic relief. Don’t miss it.
This book starts halfway through the ten-book Marc Edwards Mysteries series. I chose to read it first because it’s set in Upper Canada 1838, and I’m sliding into that time myself to do some historical research for a family history. Published in 2013 by Touchstone, the series is written by poet, author, and Western University professor emeritus, Don Gutteridge.
The story is set at a key historic moment when two Canadas are struggling for power: predominantly French Lower Canada (Quebec) and very British Upper Canada (Ontario). Rebellions have disturbed the peace in both.
A Little Political Background
Louis-Joseph Papineau, a French-Canadian reformer born in Montreal, led the rebel Patriotes in a rebellion in November 1837. They opposed the power of the Catholic Church, the British Governor, and his advisors, the Chateau Clique. After the Patriotes were defeated, many French-Canadian settlements were burned to the ground, and Papineau fled into exile in the United States. Fleeing to the USA is a popular theme especially in the old days when borders were a little less guarded.
The following month, a Scottish newspaper publisher, William Lyon Mackenzie, and his radical followers attempted to seize control of the government in Upper Canada and declare the colony a republic. As in Lower Canada, an elite clique of pro-British businessmen called the Family Compact, ran the colony through a system of patronage. The rebels wanted democracy. Many of them were American farmers who’d moved north following the War of 1812. For four days, Mackenzie and his rebels gathered at Montgomery’s Tavern, then they marched south on Toronto’s Yonge Street. Guns were fired. Confusion ensued, and they dispersed. Perhaps spending four days convening in a tavern was not the wisest plan? Mackenzie and his group eventually fled to the United States where they joined with American rebels and wreaked havoc along the border.
By the following summer, Britain still ruled from across the sea, the cliques still ran both Canadas—one French, one English—and problems still hung in the air.
What About These Bloody Relations?
Enter Lord Durham. John George Lambton Durham was made governor general to both Upper and Lower Canada, and sent abroad to sort things out and write a report. The earl was nicknamed “Radical Jack” because he swayed to the liberal side of the Whig party. In the end, Durham recommended union of the Canadas, assimilation of French Canadians, and the introduction of responsible government—an elected assembly responsible to the people, rather than a top-down monarchy. The real Lord Durham was a somewhat sickly character. Gutteridge says: “Lord and Lady Durham did visit Toronto for a day and a half in July 1838, their stay cut short by the earl’s suffering a recurrence of his migraine and neuralgia.”
http://uppercanadahistory.ca
It’s during Lord Durham’s visit to Toronto in July 1838 that Bloody Relations takes place. I mention the political background because it is important to the plot of the story and Durham’s report changed Canada forever.
As I said, this is a murder mystery, so early on a sort of “locked-room murder” occurs in a brothel in Irishtown. Lord Durham’s shy, inebriated, nephew, Handford Ellice, is discovered snuggled in bed beside poor dead Sarah McConkey. He’s still unconscious, though she’s been stabbed through the neck. And, he’s holding the knife in his hand. Madame Renee had barred the outside door after Ellice was admitted and then gone off to bed along with the three other women who worked for her. So, inside the locked brothel are three prostitutes, the madame, and Ellice. The key questions? Who done it? And why are there no blood trails if it wasn’t Ellice?
While on patrol, Constable Horatio Cobb is called to the bloody murder scene by one of the distraught prostitutes. When he realizes who the alleged perpetrator is related to, he suggests that Marc Edwards handle the rather sensitive investigation. Marc and his wife, Beth, have just been to a soiree the previous evening with Lord and Lady Durham and met Ellice; in fact, Beth danced with the shy Ellice and befriended him. Now, he’s accused of murder and the Edwards are determined to get to the truth. Edwards feel that Ellice may have been set up to derail Lord Durham’s task.
It’s a brilliant set-up for a murder mystery and Gutteridge’s literary prose, combined with his poetic prowess and believable dialogue, brings the characters to life. The settings are vivid, especially Irishtown:
“The area was essentially a squatter’s haven. Its three dozen dwellings were ramshackle affairs at best: half-log shanties, clapboard hovels, temporary lean-tos confected out of the handiest scraps and flotsam of the town they appended, as welcome as a carbuncle on a buttock” (31).
I grew up just east of Toronto and worked downtown during my late teens so am familiar with many of the streets and locations: Yonge, Bay, Queen, College Park, Osgoode Hall. And I remember being threatened with ending up on Jarvis Street, the domain of prostitutes, if I didn’t mend my ways.
Murdoch Mysteries is set in Toronto fifty years later, but fans of the constabulary would enjoy the Marc Edwards Mysteries. There’s a similarity in the type of murders, the characters themselves, their speech, and behaviour.
My Research
I hadn’t thought about the effect of politics on my characters until reading this novel. Now, I’m left wondering what it would be like for a common French carpenter and his Irish wife and children to live in Cobourg, a small harbour town in Northumberland County, just east of Toronto, in these Tory-dominated days.
1830s Cobourg
What were their political leanings? Did they support the radicals? Perhaps, want to join the throng of three thousand who came to Queen’s Wharf to meet Lord and Lady Durham’s steamer? After all, Antoine Fusee had married his fourteen-year-old bride (Louisa McNally) in Montreal only three years prior (1835). Or would they keep quiet and submit to Tory rule? Were they merely concerned with subsistence and survival? Was it even safe to be French in Upper Canada?
As for the Marc Edwards Mysteries, I think I must read them all. Don Gutteridge is a find.
Don Gutteridge, Professor Emeritus, University of Western Ontario
I recently reread Widdershins, the 11th book in Charles de Lint’s Newford series (published 2006). At 560 pages, it’s a hefty tome. I fell in love with it in chapter one when Lizzie Mahone’s car runs out of gas at a lonely crossroads in the middle of the night. Of course, you know when you’re stranded after midnight at a crossroads near an “enormous old elm tree, half dead by a lightning strike” that something extraordinary is going to happen. For Lizzie, it’s a savage attack by bogans, nasty-pants faeries with sewer-mouths whose evil plans include stealing her car.
Fortunately for Lizzie, Grey, one of the corbae (bird) cousins, arrives serendipitously and saves her. But the bogans have been hunting and left their kill in the trunk of her car. Lizzie can’t stand to see the butchered deer, so buries the pieces under the tree, then gets her fiddle and plays a lament to honour the deer’s spirit. This touching act draws the attention of Walks-With-Dreams AKA Walker, who we discover is the father of Anwatan, the butchered deer. To repay Lizzie for her kindness, Walker tells Lizzie to call on him if she’s ever in need. Well, it doesn’t take long before Lizzie’s in need.
I tell you this because the rest of this massive story plays off these different types of creatures—the humans (Lizzie and her friends), the Indigenous animal people, and the Settler faeries who invaded this land with the Europeans.
Politics is rampant and the plot and its connections complex. At its core is the conflict between the settler fae and the Indigenous animal people who call themselves cousins. A massive war is brewing, fueled by the vengeful Odawa, a cousin from the salmon clan who Grey accidentally blinded by pecking out his eyes one day. He thought Odawa was dead. Odawa betrays the animal people and joins up with the fae who refer to the Indigenous cousins disrespectfully as “Green Bree” or “pluikers.”
Meanwhile, triggered by Anwatan’s murder, Minisino and his buffalo soldiers rise up in solidarity to revenge past injustices inflicted on their ancestors by the settlers. This story is an anthropomorphic retelling of North American history. Even Lucius, the Raven who created the world, makes an appearance at the height of the conflict.
But it’s not all about faeries, transforming animals, and politics. At its heart is the ongoing love story between Jilly Coppercorn and Geordie Riddell begun in The Onion Girl (2001). Jilly’s story is dark. In order to heal and release the past horrors that are stuck deep in her subconscious to become whole, Jilly must face her childhood abuser. A lengthy piece of this book takes place within Jilly’s mind or as de Lint calls it her “heart home”. Lizzie ends up in there with her, and the pedophile who abused Jilly joins them, as horrific as he was back then. When Del turns them both back into little girls and magically makes Lizzie’s mouth disappear from her face, it seems hopeless.
As I said, this book is dark and deep, but ends with a glimmer of hope and understanding. Charles de Lint says,
“I’m a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.”
Along with light, Charles de Lint pours his musician’s soul into his characters. Lizzie and her cousin Siobhan play fiddle in a Celtic band. When Siobhan is pushed down the stairs by a vengeful bogan and sprains her arm, Geordie steps in to help. Reading this book inspired me to take up playing fiddle. I play piano and some guitar, but I’ve longed to fiddle all my life. Geordie says:
“Music needs to live and breathe; it’s only pure when it’s performed live with nothing hidden – neither its virtuosity nor the inevitable mistakes that come when you try to push it into some new, as yet unexplored place. It’s improvisational jazz. It’s the jam, the session. The best music is played on street corners and pubs, in kitchens, and on porches, in the backrooms of concert halls and in the corner of a field, behind the stage, at a music festival. It’s played for the joy and the sadness and the connection it makes between listeners and players.”
I get it. I’ve heard it. I want it.
Some people disparage fantasy just on principle. They don’t understand the scope and complexity of art that’s caught up by a label created by marketers. I love how Charles de Lint gets around that.
“I now call my work ‘mythic fiction,’ a term created with my friend, Terri Windling, when we were sitting around talking, trying to figure out what to call what we write. She is a wonderful writer, and her fiction travels along similar roads to what I do. MaryAnn often says that Terri and I were twins in a past life; we have a lot of the same sensibilities.
“We liked the term ‘mythic fiction,’ which fits perfectly. ‘Urban fantasy’ doesn’t work because a lot of what I do isn’t set in an urban setting. ‘Contemporary fantasy’ could work, but it’s kind of boring and doesn’t really say much. Besides, in 50 years you won’t be able to call my books ‘contemporary’ fantasy. ‘Mythic fiction’ works because it has broader resonances and alludes to the heart of this fiction, which is, of course, myth. It has the right tonality because these are stories that have modern sensibilities, dealing with contemporary people and issues, but they utilize the material of folklore, fairy tale, and myth to help illuminate that. It also omits the word ‘fantasy’ — a term for which people have too many preconceptions. I’m not trying to knock fantasy, because I love good fantasy and have had great support from the fantasy community throughout my career, which I very much appreciate. But I’m trying to engage an even broader audience — people who normally don’t read fantasy, who get scared by the word fantasy or by those types of covers. I think a lot of people who don’t like fantasy just haven’t had the chance to have the right book put in front of them.”
I agree completely. I also write mythic fiction. My books are rarely set in urban areas, so I’ve stopped saying I write “urban fantasy” although sometimes I still get stuck there as do all stories that are contemporary but venture into the realm of mythic creatures and the supernatural. My witches seek the wild places faeries frequent and dance under a mythic moon, so yes, it’s more mythic fiction than anything else.
The only thing I don’t understand about this book is the cover art. A church steeple and floating women? It’s a little too Practical Magic for me. Widdershins means to travel in a counterclockwise motion. Witches dance widdershins to unravel a spell or a circle they’ve cast. I understand what this means to the story. Jilly Coppercorn travels backward to unravel the spell cast over her mind by her abusive brother. She must untangle her future from her past. But the cover art? I think the artist never actually read the manuscript, and just went with what they knew about the word.
This book is so much more than its cover. So don’t let that scare you off. Venture into the mythic fiction of Charles de Lint. You’ll be captured by the first chapter. You might even get inspired to play the fiddle like Cape Breton legend, Natalie McMaster.
Cherie Dimaline never intended to write a sequel to her dystopian novel, The Marrow Thieves, but after earning the Governor General’s Award and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature, she went into schools to talk with teens about writing the book. When the kids asked if there would be a sequel and were told “no”, they booed her. They wanted to know more about seventeen-year-old Frenchie, his girlfriend Rose, and their road family. They wanted more “coming to” stories, more knowledge of this past/future apocalyptic world, and how these characters would survive this Indigenous holocaust by living as a tight, loving, bush community.
A bone-chilling tale of what could happen, Hunting by Stars is set in the not-too-distant future; perhaps 2050, certainly within the lifetime of teens reading today. When humans have all but destroyed the planet and been sickened by plague, the non-Indigenous people stop dreaming and go insane. Settler scientists experiment and find a cure. Woven within the DNA of Indigenous peoples is the ability to dream. Once it becomes apparent that this precious fluid can be extracted from bone and turned into a dream-enhancing serum, Indigenous people become a commodity to be hunted and harvested. Medical centres, termed “schools,” are constructed like space-age hospitals, and “recruiters” enlisted to track down and detain anyone who might hold the cure. Worse still, some of their own kind are “turned” and sent into communities to bring in their own people. Indigenous people should be proud to do their part in healing the world, shouldn’t they? This situation puts Frenchie’s small family on the run in northern Ontario, heading north into the wilderness, or what’s left of it.
This tale is, in some ways, prophetic; in other ways, a horror story. If you’re squeamish to tales of imprisonment and torture, this story may not be for you. If you’re anxious and afraid of the coming climate change—which is already revealing itself in floods, droughts, fires, hurricanes, and extreme temperatures—this story might not be for you. I actually had to put it down and stop reading during our recent B.C. floods. It became suddenly too real.
But know this: within the evil perpetrated by one race upon another, despite the genocide so graphically portrayed, and the ferocity of Mother Earth’s reaction to humanity’s ignorance, this is also an inspiring story of survival and hope. Case in point—though Canada is still intent on producing the serum organically, the President of the United States has put a halt to the genocide and scientists there are working on a synthetic cure. For Frenchie’s family, the underground railroad south might hold more promise than the sketchy north.
The intensity of love shown between the members of Frenchie’s family, the heart-wrenching loss, deep betrayal and depravity shown by the other, and the gritty reality of living a bush-life on the run, sink deep into our souls.
This is a political book, told in the language of reconciliation—settler versus Indigenous—and from the point-of-view of the hunted. It’s the settlers who created the problem, yet the Indigenous people are being mined as the solution. The schools, forced imprisonment, government-sanctioned hunting of Indigenous people of all ages, and the medical testing and torture that goes on within them, are all based on the Indian residential school model of the none-too-distant past. As such, past is future, and now a thin weave between.
Cherie Dimaline is from the Georgian Bay Metis Community and this story is her voice. She is both a dreamer and singer; her cinematic, poetic prose transports us where “bees swarmed broken streets, made hives out of green-clotted houses, the wallpaper shot through with moss” (389); while her fertile imagination warns us of our own ghoulish capabilities.
Hunting by Stars pulses with a rhetoric of resilience and reclamation. As Nature reclaims the Earth, so Frenchie’s family works to reclaim its culture and language, cherished word by word, action by action, dream by dream. Both books should be read and discussed in schools, for we’ve left this generation with a massive task, and books such as this and The Marrow Thieves are roadmaps to reclamation and hope.
At its heart, Under an Outlaw Moon is a love story about two kids trying to escape the Depression. Based on a true story, Dietrich Kalteis breathes life into a couple of real-life outlaws. This is not an easy thing to do. An author needs space to allow the muse to roam. Kalteis has the facts. But newspaper stories and novels are two very different genres. How does he bring this story to life and make these characters, not only sympathetic but our friends?
In his legendary clipped casual style, Kalteis creates personas from facts and those newspaper names: Bennie Dickson and Stella Mae Redenbaugh (soon to be Dickson). They meet on June 12, 1937 at a skating rink. Stella is fifteen, naïve, and impressionable; Bennie is over a decade her senior, experienced and sporting a criminal record: six years’ hard time for a bank robbery in Missouri. Still, this is love. Their romance boils and simmers while Bennie boxes under the name Johnny O’Malley, and Stella endures the pains of being a poor naïve girl in America. When they marry a year later, she’s already hurt, traumatized, and looking to escape with a romantic hero. She finds one in Bennie. An honourable, sociable, robber, Bennie reads philosophy and writes poetry; plus he’s head over heals in love with Sure Shot Stella. Who wouldn’t fall for Bennie?
These two are classically romantic. They want a house with a white picket fence. It shouldn’t take much—a couple of banks ought to do it. If only J. Edgar Hoover wasn’t the kingpin of the FBI.
Things I love about this book. Kalteis’s legendary writing style. He spins us around his short, clipped phrases and keeps us wanting more. Not many authors today write omniscient (given that agents and publishers warn us against it). But Kalteis is a literary rebel. Embracing the omniscient point-of-view, he provides us access to the thoughts of whoever has the most pertinent information at the time. The personalities of the characters shine in the dialogue. Bennie and Stella are constantly sniping at each other. Love banter. And Stella is cheeky. “You gonna call yourself unkillable again, I think I’m gonna throw up.” She loves her man; there’s no doubt about that. But she’s also spending hours and hours on the run with him, stealing cars, crossing state lines, sleeping wherever, and all in the first year of their relationship. I think she’s earned some cheeky rights. The bulk of the story spans two years: 1937-1939.
A few times, Kalteis spotlights the pursuers. Remember, this is the Depression—the days of Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker, Machine Gun Kelly, J. Edgar Hoover and his relentless G-men. We know it can’t end well, and yet, we don’t want it to end. Sitting in the back seat of Bennie and Stella’s stolen coupe is too real and we’re too invested. It’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. A good writer is much easier to spot. You’ll find one here. And though he’d tell you he’s writing crime, in Under an Outlaw Moon, Kalteis is also writing a big-hearted romance.
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