Trio of mysteries will keep you warm this winter
One of the many byproducts of the U.S. presidential election last year was a greater awareness and understanding of the Church of the Latter Day Saints and those who practice Mormonism, such as Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Even after his loss, interest in the religion and culture remains — which makes the timing of Andrew Hunt’s debut mystery, City of Saints, all the more fortuitous. Hunt, a history professor at the University of Waterloo, uses the long-forgotten but once headlinemaking murder of a 1930s-era Salt Lake City socialite as his narrative base, mixing in a terrifically paced plot and a memorable policeman hero, Art Oveson, seemingly destined for multiple outings.
In Hunt’s version, the socialite is named Helen Pfalzgraf, and she’s married to a well-to-do doctor. Oveson, when he catches the case, is the runt of a family of devout Mormons, looking out for and steering clear of his boisterous older brothers — all in varying areas of federal and state law enforcement — and trying to live up to the memory of his father, a decorated police detective. Art’s quiet, more methodical, and wants above all to support his wife and growing family. But the murder proves to be a platform for competing agendas, political and religious, all wanting to co-opt Art and take him away from the prime directive: finding Helen’s killer.
City of Saints is full of juicy twists that go deep into Mormon doctrine and travel as far as Hollywood. What remains at the novel’s forefront, however, is Art’s struggle to find his own voice. The Salt Lake City of more than 80 years ago comes alive with its wide vistas contrasted against a communal need to keep to a status quo that’s less than a century old. In Hunt’s hands, that long-ago community has an excellent chance to imprint itself upon a growing number of eager readers.
Maureen Jennings is certainly no stranger to historical fiction. Her seven-book series featuring 19thcentury Toronto police inspector Murdoch was turned into a multiepisode television series that airs around the world. And last year, with Season of Darkness, Jennings fast-forwarded to the Second World War and crossed the Atlantic to Britain, where Inspector Tom Tyler investigated crimes out of his home base of Whitchurch.
Tyler returns in Beware This Boy reeling from the tragic events of his inaugural case, chafes at the quiet that’s settled in at home. Then a munitions factory in nearby Birmingham explodes, killing several women and injuring scores of others who had been drafted to work while the men went off to war. It first appears to be an accident, but Tyler’s detecting uncovers earlier incidents, which taken as a larger whole, add up to something more criminally minded. All the while, the anguish of the survivors, and the mix of emotions women felt about serving their country as their loved ones die for the cause, hovers over the narrative, fuelling Tyler’s need for resolution.
Beware This Boy works best when Jennings makes room for her characters, from Tyler to Eileen Abbott, a factory worker observing events in her diary, to express their inner feelings in concordance with the wartime tumult. The book’s plot is more serviceable, with Jennings knowing precisely what revelation is necessary to get from inciting force to conclusion, in the face of larger concerns like the toll of war and the terrible price people pay to keep fighting. The times were tough, and Jennings reminds us exactly how.
Phyllis Smallman’s Sherri Travis mysteries are unmistakably presentday affairs. Highball Exit, Sherri’s fifth outing, catapults the Florida resident into considerable turmoil: the housing market has tanked, she’s months behind on the mortgage and her beloved Sunset Bar & Grill may close if she can’t find a way to get it back into the black. Enter an unexpected saviour, her aunt Kay, who proposes a strange bargain: look into the recent death of Kay’s young neighbour Holly and the apparent disappearance of the woman’s baby, and Sherri’s debts will be paid, in full. So what if aunt and niece didn’t always get along. Sherri says yes and gets to work.
Over the course of Highball Exit, Sherri’s most important service-industry maxims — “If you really want to dig up the dirt on someone, ask the person who changes their sheets and does their wash. If you want to spy, ask the person who empties their trash and tidies their desk.” — come true again and again. Holly’s life never appeared to be clean, but Sherri’s sleuthing demonstrates how far from squeaky the young woman’s life was, veering into prostitution, drugs, health bombshells and a slew of shady operators. Despite the darkness, Smallman maintains the lighthearted tone of the previous series books, affording plenty of subplot time on Sherri’s relationship issues.
There are a few too many logic leaps where deductive reasoning means the reader is way ahead of Smallman on certain plot elements. But Highball Exit still offers plenty of hours of mysterious entertainment in the company of an appealing heroine.