A real-life killer inspires mystery
If there is to be a Great Montreal Noir Novel, it must encompass the city’s stormy castoff of religious doctrine, its gangster past, the Quiet Revolution, and Anglofrancophone tensions that persist today. John McFetridge’s Black Rock isn’t that book, but it strikes rather close to that ideal.
McFetridge, author of four Elmore Leonard-ish tales set in Toronto, moves to the city of his birth and several decades into the past.He draws inspiration from a real-life killer who preyed upon women as Montreal’s attention was elsewhere. It was 1970, when a thenprime minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to stem the blood-drenched FLQ crisis, and police had to contend with military on their streets and the tragic kidnapping of Pierre Laporte and James Cross. No one has time to investigate the murders of young women in increasingly brutal fashion. No one except Const. Eddie Dougherty.
Dougherty is a flawed man, prone to stumbling on the right thing while doing the wrong thing. But in McFetridge’s hands, we come to care for Dougherty’s acumen and his subtle ways of challenging authority. Because of the real-life parallels, it’s not hard to predict how the story will turn. But McFetridge has a large raim in showing a Montreal we forgot, shining a light far more than statistics and embroidering the start of a rich tapestry that should develop into a larger work.