Review: The Body on the T, Mike Martin (Canada, Newfoundland)

Title: The Body on the T
Author: Mike Martin

Publication: 2013/Ottawa: Baico Publishing Inc

ISBN #: 978-1-926945-45-5

# of pages: 277

Discovered when the author advised me his second book was out

Read in e-book format

Also available in paper format

Link to author’s website: http://bodyonthet.com/

One wonders at the resilience of children: they find a body washed up on the beach but RCMP Sergeant Winston Windflower’s suggestion that they deserve an ice cream for all their help puts the bad memory behind them. Windflower and Corporal Eddie Tizzard will have to work harder for their reward though. The body has no I.D. on it, has been in the water for at least a week and no one saw anything. This is just the beginning of a case that will have unexpected twists and turns.

Fortunately Windflower, transplanted in Grand Bank Newfoundland from his Cree birthplace in Alberta, likes his home of three years, especially some of its inhabitants such as the love of his life, local café owner Sheila Hillier. Tizzard still tends to be in a tizzy when he works but he is a reliable second-in-command whom Windflower will especially come to value by the end of this case.

This is the second in the Windflower series (my review of the first book) The approach is police procedural but less the gritty aspects and more “a week in the life of a small town cop”, with a fair amount of personal background and non-investigative aspects. The essence of Newfoundland is captured in the writing, from the moose in the middle of the highway to cod tongues for dinner. The author also captures the unique Newfoundland dialect without overusing it and making the book difficult to read. I enjoyed thinking about the local coroner googling to do his autopsy and learning that the Australian Museum site he googled is real!

Initially, I was pleased to see a low key reference to the previous book and its connection to this one, only to be disappointed a few pages later when the author gave away the ending of the first book. It has always seemed unnecessary and in fact counterproductive for an author to give too much detail from a previous work; it takes away from the current one and leaves little need for the reader to get the prior one. So consider reading them in sequence.     Rating: (°_°) Worth reading


Notable sentence: “Then he had a long and serene bath with Louise Penney and Gamache as his companions.”


Author Mike Martin currently lives in Ottawa, Canada but obviously leverages his Newfoundland upbringing in his work. He is currently a freelance writer, with workplace and social policy issues being his specialty. His foray into fiction includes not only the Windflower series but also a number of short stories. A third book in this series is underway.

 

 

Review: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley (Canada: British Columbia)

Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Author: Alan Bradley
Publication: 2009/Canada: Doubleday Canada
ISBN #: 978-0-385-66582-7
# of pages: 292
Discovered at mysteries in paradise
Read in paper format
Also available in e-book and audio formats
Link to author’s website: http://www.flaviadeluce.com/
 

A girl is tied up, gagged, and locked in a closet….by her older sisters. Such is our introduction to precocious eleven year old Flavia de Luce. She, Ophelia and Daphne wage a never-ending war of revenge and counter-revenge. The ace up Flavia’s sleeve is her in-depth knowledge of poisons and her well-equipped home chemistry lab and she sets to work with Ophelia’s lipstick to get even for the closet.

 Once done, Flavia heads for the kitchen where the housekeeper Mrs. Mullet is about to leave, after assuring Flavia’s father that lunch is ready.  As Mrs. Mullet opens the door, she shrieks on discovering a dead bird with a postage stamp impaled on its beak. But the reaction of Colonel de Luce is even stronger: he gasps, clutches at his throat and turns deadly pale.

This shakes Flavia profoundly; she has never seen her father so upset. She has difficulty falling asleep that evening and overhears angry voices in the middle of the night. She sneaks downstairs and spys her father arguing with a tall red haired man. Creeping back to bed before she gets caught, Flavia briefly falls asleep, only to wake up at dawn and find the red haired man dead in the vegetable patch. Could her father really be guilty of murder? Flavia sets out to discover the truth.

I had avoided this book for some time just because I didn’t like the title (still don’t). That was a mistake because this was a delightful book with a very different heroine. Flavia reminds me of Anne of Green Gables…with a twist: like Anne, precocious and curious to a fault, and (unlike Anne) vengeful, at least towards her sisters. It was great fun picturing her upstairs in her lab, rubbing her hands together and plotting poisonous plans. Her intrepid detecting gets her into some tight spots and although she seems quite grownup at times, her solutions for getting out of these spots come from a young girl’s mind. For once, the police officer is not incompetent, although perhaps at times, he is more tolerant of Flavia than many officers might be. I liked that the family is down on their luck, despite the big manor home, so Flavia isn’t just the rich little girl who everyone feels they have to help. And is there more to what happened to her mother Harriet? Can’t wait to read more of this series.                Rating: (^_°)       Intriguing

Although the story is set in 1950s England, the author was born in Ontario, worked in Saskatchewan and retired to British Columbia. Since he wrote the book in B.C., that is the province to which I have assigned it for the Canadian Book Challenge.  Bradley worked in media for many years, including a stint teaching Script Writing and Television Production. In addition to the (so far) six book Flavia series, he has written two other non-series books, one of which proposes that Sherlock Holmes was a woman (co-written with  Dr. William Sarjeant)…now added to my “To Be Read” pile!

Review: Once Upon a Time, Barbara Fradkin (Canada: Ontario)

Title: Once Upon a Time
Author: Barbara Fradkin
Publication: 2002/Toronto: RendezVous Press
ISBN #: 0-929141-84-9
# of pages: 254
Discovered at Crime Writers of Canada
Read in paper format
Also available in e-book format
Link to author’s website: www.barbarafradkin.com

 Despite the cold Ottawa winter, an old man waits in the car while his wife attends her hospital appointment. By the time she returns, he is face down in the snow, dead.

The autopsy states the death was from natural causes, an elderly person in poor health with nothing but a small gash on his forehead. Staff Sergeant Sullivan of the Major Crimes department attended the scene and agrees with this result.  But his friend and boss Inspector Green is bored, despite the stack of paper on his desk and this small gash bothers him. Or maybe it just distracts him from bureaucratic paperwork that he doesn’t want to do.

Green decides to take a small break and make a few inquiries. In doing so, he manages to upset the pathologist, the deceased man’s family and his staff sergeant. He can’t find a logical explanation for the gash and combined with a witness to a possible second person in the car, Green decides he must continue to pick away at these few threads.

He is also supposed to be helping his wife Sharon organize their son’s first birthday party but as the investigation heats up, his work time quickly eats into his personal life. Green knows he needs to better balance the two as he has already been through one divorce as a result of his singular focus on his job but the case starts to become personal and he is soon caught up in events that occurred many years before, in Poland during World War II.

The author starts each chapter with a tantalizing poem, dating back to WWII. This is part of her strong character development. All the characters seem real, people who could be your next door neighbours. The book weaves the past and the present together well, leaving the motive in doubt until the end. Green’s struggles with both his work and family roles ring true, and you like him, despite his flaws.

Several interesting aspects of WWII are explored, particularly the life altering decisions ordinary citizens had to make, choices that sometimes are only horrific with the (apparent) clarity of hindsight. As one character says “No one is a saint who survived the ghettos. All the saints died."

This book caught my attention from the beginning and challenged me to the end. I can`t wait to read more of this series.     Rating: (^_°)       Intriguing

Author Fradkin was a child psychologist for many years before retiring to write full time, a pastime she had started at the tender age of six. The Inspector Green series totals nine books so far, two of which have won the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis award for Best Novel. ("Once Upon a Time" was shortlisted for the award.) She has also written numerous short stories, started the Cedric O`Toole mystery series for reluctant or emerging adult readers, and is a member of the Ladies’ Killing Circle which edits short story anthologies.