Going to pot
Jack Batten’s latest mystery revolves around ceramics and grow-ops
Creating an original mystery is a difficult task for any writer, especially one who reads as many mysteries as reviewer Jack Batten.
But in Take Five, Batten’s latest mystery, he has written a witty and clever tale revolving around a unique plot that keeps his readers intrigued.
This is the fifth book in Batten’s series about Crang, the criminal lawyer he only ever refers to by his last name, à la the late Robert B. Parker’s Spenser.
It has been more than 20 years since Batten’s last Crang book, Blood Count. Like a fine wine, the series — and its protagonist — have aged well.
Like Spenser, Crang is a smartass, quick with a quip and unafraid to stir the pot just to see what happens next.
Unlike Spenser, Crang is a pragmatist, not a knight errant. In Take Five, he is more motivated by desire to collect his $75,000 fee from his errant client, Grace Nguyen, than to right wrongs.
Nguyen has skipped out on a court appearance, embarrassing Crang. He decides to comb through the list of properties police raided during their investigation of the grow-op business Nguyen ran.
That leads him to a house where Nguyen creates mysterious ceramic figures — a house linked to a mobster, his attractive wife, and the Levin ceramics museum.
Mayhem and a dead body soon ensue.
For Canadian readers, especially those who live in or know Toronto, one of Take Five’s main delights is its setting. Batten set out to describe Toronto’s Annex and Harbord Village neighbourhoods, the Kingsway and the downtown legal district like distinct characters within the book. He succeeded. From Harbord’s parking problems to Crang’s favourite restaurants and the villains’ mansions in the Bridle Path, each detail is f amiliar and authentic.
The originality in Batten’s plot re-
Take Five feels like a throwback to an older era of mysteries.
volves around his use of the Gardiner Museum — renamed the Levin Museum here — and a piece of 18th-century porcelain art called The Company of Fools as the object of the heist Crang stumbles upon. It’s a pleasant change from the drugs, jewels, bodies and serial killers at the heart of many modernday mysteries.
All told, Take Five feels like a throwback to an older era of mysteries, like those of Eric Stanley Gardner.
Many of the references in the book are aimed at an audience of baby boomers or their elders.
Crang and his girlfriend, Annie, fancy themselves the Nick and Nora Charles of the Myrna Loy/William Powell films, for example. Few Gen X or Gen Y readers would recognize the characters Dashiell Hammett first created in The Thin Man. Crang’s musical tastes run to jazz, specifically from 1935 to 1980, and he hasn’t even branched out to such cutting edge musical talent as the Canadian chamber music group Tafelmusik.
Overall, Take Five is a smart, mannered mystery with a gentlemanly protagonist.