Demers releases new novel, resumes standup gigs
Charles Demers' crime-solving Vancouver psychologist Dr. Annick Boudreau is back. This time, the mystery surrounds the disappearance of Boudreau's patient, a young standup comedian who has been writing jokes to help punch up a politician's speeches.
The new novel Noonday Dark, the second in the Boudreau mystery series, follows the good doctor as she ventures into the worlds of criminal biker gangs, shady developers and crooked politicians.
Vancouver's Demers, who is also a busy standup comedian, took some time to answer a few questions.
Q This is your second Dr. Annick Boudreau Mystery novel. What did you learn from the first book that helped you when writing No. 2?
A With the first novel, it was both Dr. Boudreau's first mystery as well as mine — for both those reasons the plot was a little bit less of a puzzle. Having established her bona fides as an amateur sleuth, I felt more comfortable taking the character out into a bigger world for the second book. I was happy to be able to make the story that much more complex and hopefully rewarding this time around.
Q For those who don't know, your protagonist is a psychologist. Please explain why that field of work was interesting to you.
A I have been seeing a psychologist who specializes in cognitive-behavioural therapy since my early '20s. We started out treating my obsessive-compulsive disorder, but we've also worked on depression, general anxiety disorder, panic and some trauma work. It occurred to me that I had this wealth of experience with this kind of therapy and that that experience could help form the basis for creating a character whom I could inhabit fairly realistically and use to explore mental health themes that meant a lot to me.
Q A big plot point in this novel is the proposed plan to turn the Knight Street truck route into a corridor of condos that will make developers rich. Why this story?
A It's partly the old noir trick of having the lurid and scandalous action kicked off by some local bureaucratic issue that seems mind-meltingly dull and pedestrian on the surface. It also felt like a subplot that's really true to Vancouver today: A city in the last stages of erasing all evidence of its former life as a dirty little blue-collar place where things were pulled out of the ground or the water, as opposed to being what it is now, a beautiful place where people live and things are consumed.
Q What is it about rich developers that makes them natural bad guys?
A I think there is a tremendous feeling of disempowerment when it comes to being a citizen of the city. We feel almost no agency when it comes to preserving the things we love about the city's past or building the things we want for its future. But developers are masters of the city's present and future and determine to an enormous extent what survives of its physical past. They've attained a power like a kind of civic eternity. They're not only exempted from our greatest fears, they shape them. Small wonder people are ready to see them as villains.
Q In Noonday Dark, a main character is a standup comedian who has been hired to punch up speeches for a politician. You have done that in the past (Adrian Dix, John Horgan). Can you remember a joke of yours that got used and by whom?
A Actually, there is one little detail in the book lifted directly from my time writing jokes for Adrian Dix. Adrian had to give a speech at the Vancouver Board of Trade — this was just after Christy Clark had launched something called “Free Enterprise Fridays.” We had Adrian open that he was countering with “Theoretical Marxism Thursdays.” Apparently, it brought the house down. In Vaughn Palmer's column the next day, four of my ghostwritten jokes were quoted, which was a high-water mark. So I decided to give that story to my character Danielle. It's the only part of the book based on true events. Q How is standup these days? Are you back on stage? A I've been back on stage without stopping since late January, and it's just wonderful. In February I partnered with the Rio Theatre to fill some cancelled dates for them with local standup comedy, and that has blossomed into a wonderful monthly show called the East Van Laugh Riot. I managed to put a second album out with 604 Records at the end of March, I Hope I Don't Remember This My Whole Life, which was taped in October at my first sold-out, full-capacity show since the pandemic started, and that also felt really good — to get out an extended piece of standup that I could be proud of and that included the weird, uncanny pandemic life stuff made it feel like all those months of Zoom shows and postponed performances weren't just lost time.
Q How do you feel being back out in the world?
A Given the level of health anxiety and hypochondria I had even before COVID, as well as for the first year and change of it, I feel absolutely amazing being back out in the world and I can't totally figure out how that happened. You're talking to a guy who looked for hand sanitizer after using the debit pad at the pharmacy in 2018. I got COVID, and right now I'm dealing with a new health issue that is possibly related to my having had it. I do not pooh-pooh or minimize the virus. But I also think it now has to be considered in a broader context, including good mental health.
Q How many more Dr. Boudreau mysteries do you have on deck?
A The idea was to write a story somehow relating to a different patient each time who would each have a different mental illness or disorder for which they were seeking Dr. Boudreau's help. I have at least one more story I know I'd like to tell, this time having to do with general anxiety — and touching on elements of Québec's radical political history and the Montréal mob, without straying too far from Dr. Boudreau's Vancouver home. Because for better or for worse, it's mine, too.