by Wendy Hawkin | Jun 9, 2019 | Book Review
Cross-genre novels present the best of diverse worlds. In Mahoney’s Camaro, Michael J. Clark offers a tongue-in-cheek paranormal mystery guaranteed to make you smile.
To begin with, the story is set in 1985 Winnipeg. Laced with street-talk, the odd bit of casual sex, and the necessary obscenities, it comes with an Eighties soundtrack that will have you humming along with the car radio. Time travel back to the days of video store rentals, Beta and VHS cassettes, Consumer’s Distributing outlets, answering machines, and Sony Walkmans.
Clark also offers readers a window into the genesis of crack-cocaine which is just blowing in from the United States and is hitting the Winnipeg streets. It’s killing people who are unprepared for the shift in quality and turning recreational users into addicts. At the same time, business people who’ve been using pagers are being romanced by the notion of a cellular phone. How amazing would it be if you could make a sale on the go, rather than wait till you’re back at the office to make that callback?
But Clark’s real niche lies in his intricate knowledge of the automotive industry. He began his career by winning national awards for writing and photography in automotive journalism. Mahoney’s Camaro is a book that car guys and gals will adore. Well-peppered with allusions to makes, models, and years, any vintage enthusiast will be able to cruise along beside Mahoney with visions of cars in their head.
The book is plot-driven. There’s no complex character development—just a pack of car hounds who’ll keep you smiling.
Steve Mahoney is a nice guy—the kind of guy who’ll help you out and be glad to do it—a mechanic and tow-truck driver who pulls night shifts in “Unit 36 . . . the oldest member of the Hook Me Up Towing company fleet . . . a ’73 Chevrolet C30 chassis cab.” He lives on fast food and little sleep and finds his girlfriend while picking up a lock-out.
When he’s called out to the Red River to retrieve a submerged Camaro, Mahoney discovers a body inside—a woman handcuffed to the wheel. The police assume it’s a suicide so our hero takes the car off to be cleaned. Later, he discovers the story might not be so simple. You see, Mahoney needs spare parts to rebuild his damaged ’67 Camaro and this haul is perfect. He outbids another buyer at a salvage auction, pays $1200 for the cleaned-up purple Camaro, and gets his vehicle back on the street. The only problem is, his new Hot Rod comes with its own ghost. Heather Price.
Paranormal writers all present ghosts in their own unique way. Heather knows she’s deceased, though she’s sketchy on the why and how of it. She can make the Camaro do things. Communicate through the radio. Inspire terrifying visions. Appear in several guises including a shimmering spectre with kaleidoscope eyes and floating hair and, conversely, the corpse Mahoney pulled out of the Red River. Our hero’s not the only person who can see her, and her appearances incite mixed reactions. The woman just wants to go home. If Mahoney can solve the riddle behind her untimely demise and see justice served, perhaps he’ll get his car back. Then his girlfriend won’t be so jealous.
Mahoney’s Camaro is a quick, fun read, perfect for summer travel. You might find yourself vehicle-gazing on the highway, or hitting a vintage car rally. Fans who enjoy reading Dietrich Kalteis, A.J. Devlin, and Ron Corbett will want to join the joyride.
As published in the Ottawa Review of Books, June 2019
by Wendy Hawkin | Apr 7, 2019 | Book Review, Canadian writers, murder mystery
Photo from radish fiction.com
I had the pleasure of meeting Kelley Armstrong last weekend at Creative Ink. She is one of the most talented and generous writers I’ve met yet. I learned so much in her three-hour master class that I’m still considering. The discussion there actually prompted a complete revision of the next book I’m writing. In a good way. I also went to a panel she joined on “Elevator Pitches” — sell your book in the time it takes to travel between floors. I wrote one for the book I’m currently working on and pitched it to her when we met for our “blue pencil” appointment. She took out one word and liked the rest. When she read the first scene of my draft, she gave me nothing but positive comments and solid suggestions for how to improve. This is what a writer needs.
I started reading her “Cainsville” series two weeks ago and am surprised by similarities between it and my Hollystone mysteries series. Both are urban fantasy. Both are murder mystery. Both are written for adults—she writes some seriously edgy scenes! Both feature faeries and Celtic myth. I started with Book Two, so now I must go back and read Book One. They’re written as stand-alone novels, so I had no problem following along. I’m just hooked now and want to know more. I want to see how the characters progress from beginning to end.
My review of Kelley’s latest Rockton book appeared last week in the Ottawa Review of Books. You can click the link or read it here.
Who is The Watcher in the Woods?
Book Four in Kelley Armstrong’s Casey Duncan crime series follows fresh on the heels of Book Three; in fact, it’s so fresh the bodies are still decomposing in the woods. Without divulging too many spoilers, one of the men who pursued the serial killer in the last story is shot in the back. A bullet is lodged near Kenny’s spine and there are no surgeons in Rockton—just a butcher who was once a psychiatrist.
Intent on saving Kenny’s life, Detective Casey Duncan and Sheriff Eric Dalton fly secretly to Vancouver to appeal to the best neurosurgeon they know: Casey’s older sister. They must sneak her into town for security reasons. Of course, in a town the size of Rockton, it’s hard to sneak anybody anywhere. The introduction of April as a major character opens up Casey’s family history and peels more layers from her backstory. But the sisters’ relationship is tenuous as April is about as gifted and gregarious as “House.”
Rockton is a town built on secrets. Imagine living in a place in the middle of the Yukon wilderness. A place that is not on a map or visible by plane or satellite or hooked up to the Internet. A place hidden from the world. Imagine that everyone who lives there, all two hundred of you, have been brought here for a reason. Refuge. You’re either a victim of crime or a criminal yourself. The butcher may have murdered his entire family. The madam who runs the bordello may have ripped off the elderly for their life savings. Your neighbour may have been a hit man for the mob. It’s an idyllic prison, of sorts. Even our fearless detective is hiding out for a reason: she is a killer. Not a “line of duty” kind of killer—a “woman who went looking for a man with a gun in her pocket” kind of killer.
Into that mix, throw a man who claims to be a U.S. Federal Marshal in search of a fugitive. Let him track down the hidden town, watch from the woods, then come in bold-faced and search among the townspeople for his target. Idealism turns to chaos. Everyone is certain the marshal is there to drag him or her back to face justice. The marshal claims the person he is seeking appears normal but is criminally insane—a description that fits several of Rockton’s residents. But he won’t reveal who he’s hunting. Now, what would happen if the marshal was found murdered? If indeed he is a marshal. How difficult would it be to determine who shot him?
With a police force of three, a volunteer militia, and an unreliable council who deals out its own brand of justice, anything can happen. In the previous book, the leader of the council was removed. I won’t tell you how that happened. But, the new leader is adversarial and just as sketchy as his predecessor.
The romantic sub-plot takes a back seat in this book. Now that Casey and Eric have settled into their relationship, Casey focuses on protecting her newly-adopted town from itself. She suspects everyone of murdering the U.S. Marshal, except her boyfriend. Even her estranged sister, who appeared in Rockton at the same time as the man, is suspect.
And then there are the hostiles—residents who’ve left Rockton to take up residence in the wilderness. Intriguing and terrifying, these shadow-creatures are something between reavers and zombies. With just a hint of humanity, they appear when least expected. In this book, Armstrong throws in a delicious twist that makes us wonder how they evolved—or rather devolved. Fodder for another sequel? Please.
Armstrong’s clean, tight, present-tense narration propels this crime thriller through rock-strewn paths to the big reveal. With a town like Rockton, and so much more to learn about Casey Duncan and her partner, Eric Dalton, this series could go on indefinitely.
from the Ottawa Review of Books, March 2019
by Wendy Hawkin | Mar 22, 2019 | Book Review, murder mystery
I’ve been a Shetland fan for the last few years and have watched all three seasons on Netflix (multiple times) but I’d never read any of Ann Cleeves’ novels.
I chose Thin Air (which is book five in the Shetland series and not on Canadian Netflix) mainly because it was available at my library, and it was in paperback. I like paperbacks best. They are lighter to read in bed.
The woman’s writing blew me away. Reading Ann Cleeves is like being wrapped in a silky merino wool blanket. I can see why there is a cue of holds for her novels. I couldn’t wait to snuggle down in my bed every night and immerse my mind in her comforting prose by the light of my pink salt lamp. I don’t know exactly what it is about her style that affects me so much. Perhaps, it’s the detail.
I’m going to assume that, like me, Ann Cleeves is quite visual. She paints pictures so true-to-life, I feel like I can see what she is seeing in her mind, and what our hero, Jimmy Perez, is seeing in his. As a detective, Perez is a keen observer. He’s not romantic and flowery, (though he’s certainly charming and loveable) but he’s genuinely interested and his mind is always spinning around the murder case. In this passage, he goes to London to speak with the victim’s mother:
She led him into a wide hallway. The walls had been painted a deep green and there were pictures everywhere. The art was unfamiliar. Some looked like prints of cave paintings, scratched images of animals and birds. Primitive, but also amazingly lifelike. There were photos of strange dwellings growing out of hillsides, a collage made from scraps of woven cloth and two large abstract oils. He would have liked to spend more time with them, but she’d already moved on and had settled on the windowsill in a room that seemed half-sitting room and half-study. There was a desk and the walls were hidden by bookshelves. In one corner an armchair was covered with a batik throw and next to it stood a coffee table made from animal hide. There was a glass on the table and Perez thought that she’d been sitting here when he’d phoned the night before. Now she was framed by the window, so she looked like a piece of art herself. The background was a small courtyard garden, where the sun had been trapped by a brick wall. In the corner stood a tree covered in pink blooms in a pot.
Naturally there is a murder. Two, in fact. And a tie that binds the victims. There is also sea, shifting fog, ferries, and stone cottages. And most importantly, a legendary ghost. Peery Lizzie. A ten-year-old girl who got lost in the fog and drowned in the flooding tide in the 1920s. Was it murder or an accident? Was Peery Lizzie lured to her death? And how is she connected to our recent victims? However she succumbed, it is the ghost of Peery Lizzie who helps our detectives unravel the murder.
Because no one ever really disappears into thin air. Do they?
by Wendy Hawkin | Mar 5, 2019 | Book Review
This is no Throw Momma from the Train. These are high school kids in their senior year, messing with each other in ways only Eileen Cook can imagine. More psychological thriller than black comedy, it’s perhaps spawned by the 1951 Hitchcockian thriller Strangers on a Train—two strangers who agree to exchange murders so neither can be connected to the victim.
We could call this book “Strangers on a Plane.” Nicki, the charming British psychopath meets Kim Maher in the Vancouver airport when their London flight is delayed several hours. Kim is beginning a sixteen-day “Student Scholars for Change” program, along with several strangers and a boy named Connor who’s just dumped her. Kim is devastated, but she’s come along on the trip, regardless. From the outset, Connor is the boy you love to hate, as we watch him carry on with Miriam, his new love interest.
Written in first person and viewed entirely through Kim’s eyes, it’s feasible she might get drunk with a manipulative stranger and share her personal problems. She hasn’t connected with anyone else in the group. She’s lonely and vulnerable. She might even write a list of reasons, with Nicki’s prompting, called WHY I HATE CONNOR O’REILLY and cap it with AND WHY HE DESERVES TO DIE. And when, through a vodka haze, Kim hears Nicki’s tragic tale—parents divorced, an abusive alcoholic mother who won’t let her live with her father in Vancouver—she might even agree that Nicki’s mother deserves to die too.
The girls bond over their woeful stories, but it’s clear that the older, more worldly, Nicki is in control from the outset. She’s already goaded Kim into stealing a bottle of vodka from the duty-free shop. After the night of drinking and sharing on the plane, Kim awakens alone and hung over, wondering what happened. Nicki’s gone, but she’s got the list that details why Connor should die, along with her own list. Kim has drunkenly agreed that the concept of murdering for each other is pure genius though she’s stated she is no killer. Everyone contemplates killing a nasty ex, don’t they? Maybe even a mean, drunken mother? It was all just talk, wasn’t it?
After landing in Heathrow, the students find their rather dodgy lodgings in South Kensington. Part travelogue, with a scattering of historical references, Cook’s detailed, sensory descriptions of London and her tongue-in-cheek humour backdrop the text. Kim’s room is “like an attic you’d find in a Charlotte Bronte novel, one where you kept a crazy relative.” Little does Kim know that by the end of the novel, she’ll be questioning her own sanity.
Soon after arrival, the students pair off and Kim finds herself with Alex, a boy so nice, so innocent, I immediately suspect him of something heinous. Is he working with Nicki, a subtle plant? Kim finds the innocent, supportive, highly allergic Alex irresistible, and he’s appeared just at the right time. Distracted by Alex and the possibility of true love, Kim forgets about Nicki and their drunken hyperbolic rant on the plane until she glimpses her at the Tower of London. Though Kim charges after her, the ever-elusive Nicki slips into the crowd and disappears.
Then Connor makes a fatal error. At the chaotic South Kensington tube station, he confronts Kim about Alex. “If you’re dating him just to make me jealous, there’s no point.” The conversation ends in a flurry of obscenities and seconds later, someone jumps in front of the train. Kim sees the blue Nike sneaker. Connor. But did he jump or was he pushed? Why would he jump? Is it possible that Nicki murdered Connor? Pushed him in front of the train at the last second and disappeared into the chaos? Kim wrestles with the guilt of all the horrible things she’s said about him, and then the games begin.
“You owe me a murder,” states Nicki. What will it take for Kim to pay up?
Eileen Cook is a trickster. Nothing is what it seems. Unravelling the truth from the appearance of truth is one of her specialities. Cook won the John Spray Mystery Award for The Hanging Girl in 2018. Her psychological thrillers may feature teenage characters, but their actions are mature and calculated.
Injected with subtle wit, coloured by shades of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, You Owe Me a Murder, will keep you awake and guessing right until the end.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, March 2019
As reviewed in the Ottawa Review of Books, March 2019
by Wendy Hawkin | Feb 2, 2019 | Book Review, Canadian writers, Ireland
In the prologue of this historical novel, Anne Emery reveals that the title is derived from a Latin phrase inscribed on the Four Courts in Dublin, fiat justitia ruat caelum. Transcribed in English it means “let justice be done though the heavens fall.” It’s a fitting title for a book starring a Catholic priest and a lawyer, both who are consumed by righting wrongs in Northern Ireland.
This book is set in Belfast 1995. Though the IRA has called a ceasefire, it’s still an uneasy time. Centuries of violence and hatred have left a legacy of vengeance that is unforgettable, and for some, unforgivable. Everyone has been affected in some way; most have lost family members, through death and imprisonment. It is a difficult conversation and I applaud Anne Emery for her courage. This could not have been an easy book to research and to write, and is, at times, not easy to read.
Much of the story is based on historical events, and be forewarned: the tale is told by Republican characters from a Republican point-of-view. Though we sometimes hear that horrible crimes were committed by both sides, most events depicted were perpetrated by Orangemen—Protestants loyal to Britain who wanted to keep their border (their wall) and a divided Ireland. The brutal beatings in Loyalist prisons. The Catholic Republican martyrs who died in Kesh while enduring hunger strikes to make their point. These were Nationalists who wanted the British out of Ireland, the border gone, and a free self-determining Republic that included the entire island, all thirty-two counties.
This is a timely book release, given the looming threat imposed by Brexit. If the right deal is not struck between the EU and Britain by the March 29 deadline, the physical partition between north and south, that fell after the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998, could rise again with British troops and all the anguish that divides a people.
It is this highly charged emotional backdrop that fuels the question: can justice be done?
The two main characters in this story are both determined to right past wrongs and see justice done. This book is part of a series, the Collins-Burke Mysteries and is actually Book Ten. Having not read any of the others—which are set in Nova Scotia where Collins and Burke live—I read it as a stand-alone. The characters are developed well enough, and we see them working away from home, navigating a hostile environment.
While working in Belfast on a farm equipment case, Monty Collins gets caught up in trying to solve the 1992 murder of a Republican, which has left the man’s family destitute. Because his death has been deemed an accident—Eamon Flannigan was drunk and fell off a bridge so the story goes—his family can claim no financial compensation. Out of the goodness of his heart and his pocketbook, Monty becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened out there on the bridge that night. If he can pin Flannigan’s murder on someone, he can, at least, save this family from financial ruin. The same night near the same bridge, an IRA gunman was executed by an Ulster man.
Meanwhile, Father Brennan Burke is living with his cousin Ronan’s family in Andersontown, a Republican community southwest of Belfast. Ronan Burke is a leading man in the IRA—the man his supporters would hail as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) if ever they had the chance to create a new, peaceful Ireland. He’s tough and he’s loved. He’s also a prime target who travels with bodyguards, and the ghosts of his past, and his son’s, arise to haunt him. Ronan is investigating an unsolved bombing from 1974 that killed many civilians—one of whom was Father Burke’s best mate. The suspects are all dead but one—a man who’s just returned to Belfast, and the Burkes are intent on bringing him to justice.
Emery’s writing is impeccable, sophisticated and polished; the accents subtle enough to set the reader in Belfast without sounding staged or overdone. Though politically complex, Emery has a way of making this war accessible, even understandable. The gritty details are difficult to read. She sets us down in the thick of it, with all the graffiti, the ruins, the prison beatings, and massacres. At times, you can almost smell the smoke of the bombs, feel the despair, taste the blood. And in the end, when the heavens fall and come crashing down around Father Brennan, his realizations link all the puzzle pieces together. For at the heart of this book is a political murder mystery rife with red herrings.
As reviewed in the Ottawa Review of Books, February 2019
The Four Courts, Dublin, courtesy of libraryireland.com
by Wendy Hawkin | Dec 26, 2018 | Book Review, urban fantasy
An enthralling urban fantasy spanning 380 years, in this tale the witch’s daughter becomes a witch herself. Naturally. And also rather unnaturally.
The tale begins in the village of Matravers, Wales in 2007, when Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith meets a fifteen-year-old girl named Tegan and the two become friends. Living a quiet life in her comfy cottage behind a holly hedge (for protection); Elizabeth is a herbalist, a healer, and sells her crafted wares at farmer’s markets. This is a life I would conjure for myself. There is peace here, and yet she is lonely. So, when Tegan takes an interest in witchcraft, Elizabeth begins to share her Book of Shadows—the journal of her lives.
The novel is structured around sabbats and written as a diary, yet the description is rich and detailed. Born in Bathcombe, Wessex, in the 1620s, Elizabeth, or Bess, as she is known then, lives an idyllic country life with her loving mother, father, brother, and baby sister. This life calls to me, this hedge witchery, this living in the Shire. But then, the romance ends with the arrival of the Black Death. And we meet the sinister, Gideon Masters, a warlock who Bess’s mother appeals to for help when all seems lost. A life in exchange for a life. Making a deal with the devil is never wise. It is Gideon who gives Bess her tools, teaches her the chants, and helps her come into her power. And though she escapes the witchfinder who threatens to burn her, Bess cannot escape Gideon, who pursues her for the next 380 years using various disguises.
Paula Brackston is a master with language and she’s done her research. One of the things I like about this cleverly plotted book is how she spices it with well-known historical characters and settings. In London, 1888, Jack the Ripper is killing prostitutes at Whitechapel, and Bess, now Eliza, suspects it’s because of her. Now a doctor, she’s opened a clinic for prostitutes. Could the ripper really be Gideon Masters? Then, almost thirty years later, we find Bess working as a nurse at Passchendaele using her power to ease the suffering of men wounded at the front. Her visceral descriptions leave us feeling raw. Elizabeth has fallen in love, but is it safe? Who among this sea of soldiers is Gideon Masters?
Meanwhile, back in Wales 2007, her naïve new friend, Tegan, has fallen in love herself. Has Gideon found her again?
Part urban fantasy, part historical romance, there is much Wicca lore woven into this book, and with it, a darker tale, that of the cloven-footed mesmerizer who leaves nothing in his wake but death and destruction.
“This stops now,” says Elizabeth.
But how can she defeat the devil?
