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 Part travelogue, with a scattering of historical references, Cook’s detailed, sensory descriptions of London and her tongue-in-cheek humour backdrop the text.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?
by Wendy Hawkin | Dec 3, 2018 | Book Review, Canadian writers
Vicious bikers. The Irish mob. A family of squatters. A clever police detective. Death Count 26.
Some landscapes summon evil and once there, it lingers. Ragged Lake was a German POW camp during World War II, and then a mill town owned by O’Hearn Forest Products. Now, in its death throws, it’s transformed into something you don’t ever want to encounter, except perhaps in fiction.
Ron Corbett is a rare breed: journalist and poet. His detailed knowledge of war, of crime, of people and their nightmarish capabilities, fuses with a talent for sensory language and visceral description to lift the story off the page. Like a shotgun blast. This is a crime novel and something else—a genre called “rural noir”—a black day in the country and no picnic. Corbett writes in omniscient third-person mixing viewpoints to create a fast-paced, plot-driven, page-turner. The characters don’t change—there’s no time for that.
It begins with a triple murder. Special Forces soldier Guillaume Roy, his woman, Lucy Whiteduck, and their little girl, Cassandra, are murdered in the ramshackle cabin they built on the shore of Ragged Lake. They are squatters on O’Hearn land and keep to themselves as much as possible. Much of the backstory is revealed through the journal Lucy leaves with an old Cree woman three days before her murder: her not-so-idyllic childhood living in the Five Mile lumber camp run by O’Hearn, where her Cree father was foreman; her intimate connections with the Irish mob from Corktown; her therapy sessions; her relationship with Roy, and their escape into the wilderness. There, by the shore of Ragged Lake, for a moment, Lucy experiences peace: “Love. Work. Family. The fine high rise of that. Those were our days.”
Burley police detective, Frank Yakabuski comes to investigate the murders with two young Ident officers. Yakabuski discovers that the Popeyes are operating a giant methamphetamine lab in the defunct survival school. He figures the squatters found the lab and were executed by the bikers. Perhaps. But that, as the cliché goes, is only the tip of the exploding iceberg.
Ottawa author, Ron Corbett says: “If you’re a writer, whether fiction or non-fiction, unless you’re writing about a place that you’re familiar with and that’s important to you, I don’t know why you’re doing it.” Corbett has spent his life travelling and writing about the Ottawa Valley and Algonquin Highlands. Because he’s created a “fictionalized Northern Divide” all the time I was reading, I kept wondering where I was. Now I know. Ragged Lake lies on the southern border of Algonquin Park—one of my favourite places in the world. In 2000, Corbett camped there and wrote a newspaper feature based on his experiences. The author is most known for The Last Guide, his autobiography of Frank Kuiack, Algonquin Park’s last remaining fishing guide. In Ragged Lake, Corbett takes his experiences as a journalist and spins them into fiction.
photo from http://algonquinadventures.com
Corbett is also well acquainted with war stories, having written First Soldiers Downabout Canada’s deployment to Afghanistan. Both Detective Yakabuski and Special Ops Guillaume Roy bear the grisly scars of war and military training. Sometimes it’s hard to read. Roy’s experience in Bosnia, for example, is almost too real.
Toronto publisher, ECW, uses the acronym “Extreme Cutting-Edge Writing” and that’s what you’ll find here. Grisly, raw, evocative fiction based on experience and a sense of place…and what a place.
As reviewed in the Ottawa Review of Books, December 2018
by Wendy Hawkin | Nov 10, 2018 | Book Review
Seventeen-year-old Skye Thorne plays with paranormal. Though she pretends to be a psychic—like Sherlock Holmes, Skye uses her observation skills to wangle her way through tarot card readings. Legally named Candi, by her strange, single mom, Skye needs the cash to escape to New York after graduation. She’s made plans with her wealthy best friend, Drew. Skye and her mom live on the poor side of this small Midwestern town, and though she works shifts at Burger Barn, and earns lunch tickets by helping in the milk and cookies counsellor’s office, Skye hasn’t saved a cent. Though, she has accrued a fair amount of information about her peers, since she has access to their files.
A strong female protagonist, with questionable moral values, Skye Thorne has a barbed sense of right and wrong. A part of me wants her to be a “good girl” and do the right thing; instead, Cook has given us a real girl with flaws and real-world problems.
Money is what motivates Skye to participate in the kidnapping of Paige Bonnet, whose rich father is a judge and Senate-hopeful. Newsflash: Paige is no “good girl” either. Skye’s task is to lie and manipulate her way into working with the police as a psychic, to drop just the right hints at just the right time to ensure Paige’s plans succeed. With her experience, it should have been easy. Unfortunately, Judge Bonnet refuses to pay his daughter’s ransom, and then, a body turns up. When Skye’s annoying mother weasels her way into the case, the whole thing turns upside down…like “the hanging girl”.
Skye must solve the crime before her deception is revealed and fingers start pointing in her direction; otherwise, the hanging girl could easily become the hanged girl.
A dark murder mystery, The Hanging Girl is also an American teen novel, with all its angst, tragic twists, and social stigma. Eileen Cook, known for her YA thrillers, grew up in Michigan (like Skye Thorne) but now calls Vancouver home. She teaches writing at Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio Program and works as an editor—facts that are illustrated in her prose. Written in first person and peppered with references to teen life, the reader becomes immersed in Skye’s contemporary world of Amazon, Pop-Tarts, and Diet Coke. But, beneath the mundane allusions lies something sinister. Cook once worked counselling people with “catastrophic injuries and illness” which might account for some of the psychological Girl on a Train vibe in this novel.
In the end, this book left me mulling over tragic Shakespearian heroines and wondering: what’s a girl willing to do to survive?
Eileen Cook won the John Spray Mystery Award in 2018 for The Hanging Girl. Congratulations, Eileen Cook!
As posted in The Ottawa Review of Books December 2017 edition
by Wendy Hawkin | Nov 9, 2018 | Book Review
Two best friends with differing social backgrounds. A senior year trip to Italy. A charming Italian tour guide. And a fatal accident.
Or was it an accident?
One minute, Jill Charron is anticipating the trip of her dreams, and the next, she awakens in a hospital bed in her hometown. Except six weeks have passed and she has no memory of her romantic Italian adventure. No memory at all. Her lifelong best friend, Simone, is dead—killed when the car Jill was driving careened off a walled road in Tuscany. And then the bomb drops. The Italian police want to extradite Jill Charron and charge her with murder.
Just as an aside, in Greek mythology Charon is the ferryman of Hades who takes the souls of the deceased across the River Styx into the land of the dead. Charon exacted a coin for passage and those who did not pay the fee might be left wandering for a century. Is Jill this Charon? Did she ferry Simone into the land of the dead or leave her wandering on the shore?
The mind is a complex creature. It can protect us by hiding what we can’t accept or bear to know. It can distort things. What really happened on that mountain road in Tuscany? “The truth,” Eileen Cook warns us on the front cover, “is how you tell it.” This need to know “the truth” is what propels the story and keeps the reader turning pages.
Cook leads us through a maze of viewpoints in an attempt to unravel this truth. What I find most interesting about this book is how she accomplishes that. Obviously, Jill lends her first-person perspective to the story—but it is limited by amnesia. She is an unreliable narrator. All Jill can really cling to is the notion that she would never kill her best friend, not “with malice.” It’s just not possible. Others think differently.
The Italian police believe Jill is guilty. She had motive, means, and opportunity. There was nothing wrong with the car, no bad brakes, no steering problem. Jill’s father, a rich businessman, hired a private plane to whisk her away from the hospital in Italy and bring her back to American soil where he could protect her. And, in their mind, this is an admission of guilt. Then, he also hired a hotshot lawyer to defend her and create a public profile. The public are easily swayed and there’s been a media frenzy for weeks.
This psychological mystery is as twisted as the Tuscan streets. We read police interviews with various friends and Simone’s grieving parents, the eulogy for Simone, a forensic psychology report that assesses the girls’ friendship, texts, emails, Facebook posts, media reports, and the extremely damaging Justice for Simone blog. The clever interspersing of these various bursts paints a picture of the relationship between Jill and Simone and fills in some of what occurred during the six weeks leading up to Jill’s awakening. Everyone reveals something—an opinion, a stray fact, an eye-witness report. And we are left wondering if it is possible that Jill IS guilty.
The novel’s unsettling ending bookends the troubling beginning and we are left wringing our hands over this tragedy and wondering what is the truth?
Eileen Cook teaches writing at Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio Program and works as an editor. Her prose is flawless. In her last life, she counselled people with “catastrophic injuries and illness” something that gives her credibility and insight into Jill’s injuries and recovery process.
As posted in the Ottawa Review of Books November edition.
