A young woman is found dead in a cottage on the shores of an Ontario lake. Next to her, a portable record player is playing the second Schubert Piano Trio on repeat. The only clue to her identity is a bruise-like mark on her neck that indicates she is a violinist – Detective MacNeice recognizes that because his late wife was also a violinist. (Aside: I have played the violin since I was 6 years old and don’t have that mark… maybe I never practiced enough, maybe I have a tough neck, who knows!)
This was a gripping crime novel with plenty of action and great characters, who are clearly set to come back for another novel. There’s “Mac” MacNeice, detective extraordinaire, still feeling like a pice of himself is missing after his wife’s death three years earlier. There’s Fiza Aziz, the beautiful junior detective with a PhD in Criminology, and the hints of sexual tension between her and Mac; Michael Vertesi, ambitious and dedicated detective who charms one of the residents of a nearby cottage into going out with him as he’s questioning her about what she did or didn’t see the night of the murder; Marcello, owner of the Italian restaurant Mac loves.
My only quibble is with the setting, the fictional Ontario city of Dundurn. It is so clearly Hamilton that I don’t understand why Thornley gave it a different name. The street names, the geography of the city with the escarpment on one side and the lake on the other, the location of the university (name changed though) – all those are Hamilton’s. I could maybe understand if Thornley was describing it as an awful city where nothing good ever happens, and I have heard many people speak disparagingly of Hamilton for being gritty and industrial, but Thornley clearly loves it and describes it with care. It seems to me that using its real name would have made Hamiltonians proud to read about their city, and would have given the book an added touch of reality.
This is 3/13 for me in the Canadian Book Challenge 5.
This sounds intriguing, but our libraries don’t have it. I’ll have to get it via inter-library loan – though new books aren’t eligible, apparently.
Too bad your library doesn’t have it, I think it’s definitely worth a read! Do they have any way for you to suggest books for them to buy for the collection?
Sounds very interesting! That’s weird about changing the name of Hamilton. I don’t know enough about Hamilton to know if it’s fake or not though!
Jen – other authors do this too, and maybe it just bothered me more this time because I know the ‘real’ Hamilton a bit. Giles Blunt changes North Bay to Algonquin Bay, and apparently that is also very thinly disguised… but I’ve never been to North Bay so I don’t know the difference, and what I don’t know can’t bother me! Maybe it’s easier for the authors to use a fictional name, so that if they don’t want to keep the place exactly as it is in real life, they don’t have to.
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