Category Archives: Vicki Delany

I’ve (virtually) climbed Mount Logan

Posted on by
6

I’m prepared to accept that reading 13 books is not quite as rigorous a challenge as climbing the highest mountain in Canada, and I’m sure it was a lot more fun but the stages of the Canadian Book Challenge #4 were all names after mountains so I’m happy to claim the scalp. For the challenge I needed to read 13 Canadian books (written by Canadians or set in Canada) between 1 July 2010 and 1 July 2011 so I’ve squeaked in with a month to spare. And here they are one more time:

Book 1 - April Fool by William Deverell (rated 3.5) A funny tale featuring an over 50 lawyer battling the forces of environmental destruction.

Book 2 - The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney (rated 3.5) An evocative historical fiction tale featuring the hunt for a murderer in remote Canada in 1867. This one ties for the best sense of place of the bunch.

Book 3 – The Devil’s in the Details by Mary Jane Maffini (rated 3.5) A victim’s right’s activist is named the beneficiary of the will of someone she can’t remember meeting which turns out to put her life in danger.

Book 4 –  Dead Politician Society by Robin Spano (rated 3) A Toronto politician is killed and a young female policewoman goes under cover in a local political science course to see if the murderer can be found.

Book 5 – The Taken by Inger Ashe Wolfe (rated 3.5) The discovery that a body in a lake is really a mannequin should bring relief to 62 year-old policewoman Hazel Micallef but it starts a strange game of cat & mouse with a killer.

Book 6 – The Dead of Midnight by Catherine Hunter (rated 3.5) A crime fiction book club losing members due to their grizzly deaths. Eeek, a little close to home :)

Book 7 - Negative Image by Vicky Delany (rated 3.5) A fashion photographer is murdered in the fictional town of Trafalgar (BC) and local policeman John Winters is under suspicion for the crime.

Book 8 – A Colder Kind of Death by Gail Bowen (rated 3.5) Joanne Kilbourn becomes a murder suspect when the man who is in prison for murdering her husband is killed.

Book 9 – Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt (rated 3.5) A young girl’s body is found 5 months after she was assumed to have run away and Detective John Cardinal must investigate this crime and others linked to it. This was the other book that tied for best sense of place as it had very strong imagery. It would have rated 4 but for the rather lengthy focus on the torture perpetrated on some of the victims. 

Book 10 - The Edge by Dick Francis (rated 4) The only ring-in but the book features an across-Canada rail trip on which an English Jockey Club investigator goes undercover to try to stop a criminal deed. It’s Dick Francis at his storytelling best.

Book 11 – The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (rated 2.5) A dystopian future not unlike many others depicted for us I found this one a bit predictable and very, very slow. It didn’t help that the audio book contained the book’s hymns being sung by a dweeb with a guitar which was very grating on the ears.

Book 12 – The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny (rated 3.5) In a fictional Quebec village the body of a man is found in the local bistro which is odd enough but even more peculiar is that no one in the small village admits to knowing who he is.

Book 13 – An Ordinary Decent Criminal by Michael Van Rooy (rated 3.5) A funny and engaging tale in which an ex violent criminal moves to Winnipeg where some people are determined not to make it easy for him to ‘go straight’.

I can’t really draw any insightful conclusions about the state of Canadian crime fiction (all but one of these books was in my preferred genre) other than that I think it’s in fine shape if a near random selection of books can produce 11 out of 13 books rated A good, solid entertaining read with a spark of something special or better on my personal rating scale. The only theme (if you can call it that) I noticed is that more than a few of the books dealt with tough subjects through the use of humour that seemed similar in some ways to the Australian way of looking at things. Of course this could be because I naturally selected books like that when scouring descriptions and reviews for challenge books.

I will be reading more by many of these authors which is, I guess, at least one aim of the challenge and have another Canadian book nearing the top of my TBR pile which will count towards the Global Reading Challenge.

Books of the Month – October 2010

Posted on by
8

That Was Then

I finished another 15 books during October (a couple of reviews still to come). Although I didn’t have any 5-star reads it was a high quality month with nothing rating below a 3. My pick of the month has to be Jo Nesbø’s The Redbreast, a novel I abandoned on my first reading last year but picked up again after you all told me to and fell in love with the book’s protagonist, Harry Hole.

There are a veritable treasure trove of honourable mentions which I simply cannot separate. They include trips to Scotland, Iceland, Ghana, America, England, 1850′s Australia and Japan.

New Additions

Since buying my eReader I have curtailed my acquisition of printed books quite dramatically (good for the trees) but have been busy stocking up eBooks and audio downloads (bad for the bank balance). Included among my new acquisitions are the latest Belinda Lawrence mystery, a Harry Bosch novel (Maxine made me give Connelly another go), a flash fiction anthology of stories that involve a mythical ‘Mega Mart’, the second novel in Karin Fossum’s Inspector Sejer series (yes I know I’m behind) and a historical work that blends fact with fiction in what promises to be an interesting fashion.

Challenge Progress

It’s a good thing I had a whole year to complete the Global Reading Challenge as it looks like it will take me that long to finish it. This month I read another two books to bring my total to 19 of 21. Both Villain and Wife of the Gods made it to my honourable mentions for the month.

My only other open challenge is the Canadian Book Challenge which requires me to read 13 books by July next year. I read four books that counted for this challenge in October bringing my total to 7.

Isn’t it marvellous that Canada produces enough entertaining female crime writers that I can have a smorgasboard of them without even trying? Well I am assuming Wolfe is female though of course as it’s a pseudonym I could be wrong.

Reading Now and Next

I’m keen to finish the global challenge now that I only have 2 books to go so have started Southwesterly Wind which is set in Brazil and I’ll probably read my wildcard historical fiction straight after that. Then it might be time for my second Elly Griffiths novel I think. I’ve just started a new audio book, C J Box’s Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, which I am already enjoying and have no plans for what will come after that in audio format.

Chart of the month

So far this year I have finished 129 books which seemed like a statistically significant enough number to look at where they all come from. As you can see I buy most of my books in one form or another. Wonder what this will look like next year? Will I have a giant chunk of pie for pirated eBooks ( and if I do how will I hide it to avoid going to prison)?

What about you? What was your favourite book for October? Or your most exciting acquisition? Or is there something coming up for you in November that you can’t wait to get to?

Review: Negative Image by Vicki Delany

Posted on by
8

The 7th book which will count towards my Canadian Book Challenge is the newest installment of Vicki Delany’s Constable Molly Smith series and is due for publication on 2 Nov 2010. This pushes me over the half-way point of the challenge.

In the fictional small town of Trafralgar in British Columbia a famous fashion photographer is murdered in his hotel room. At first the town’s small police force requests the help of the Mounted Police for simple manpower reasons but when the wife of their lead investigator, John Winters, falls under suspicion they are forced to rely, seemingly mistakenly, on the impartiality of the outsiders.

I was very angry with John Winters for much of this book. His behaviour upon learning his wife Eliza was under suspicion for the murder was pretty poor, essentially he abandons the woman he has apparently loved for 25 years, and I mentally tut-tutted that I expected better of a man like him. This is not to say his behaviour was unrealistic, I suspect it would be a common response, but says a lot for the way Delany has grown her stock characters over the series that I was disappointed in Winters. I would also have liked to have seen things more from Eliza’s point of view. We do learn a little about her days as a young fashion model when she had a relationship with the murder victim but it would have been nice to see more of her reacting to being under suspicion and having a her husband go AWOL rather than deal with the issue.

Molly Smith is growing into a nicely well-rounded character. Here Delany depicts the difficulty a young woman might face being in the police force. Not only is Molly subject to some pretty juvenile ribbing and even nastier innuendo about her sexual exploits (let’s face it this could happen to any woman in any job) but she also comes under threat from a man she was responsible for jailing who has now been released. Although I’m sure male police officers experience threats and worse from criminals they’ve imprisoned, I suspect for a certain type of man it would be far worse to have been caught by a ‘lowly’ woman and that’s what seems to play out here. Given that Molly is also undergoing some family trauma and experiencing some minor troubles with her fledgling relationship she’s got a lot to handle in this book but works through it all credibly.

The plot itself, including the main mystery as well as a side thread about a series of robberies and a storyline dealing with Molly’s father’s illness, is very sound if not terribly surprising. As always with this series it is the mixture of crime solving and small town life that is appealing as both feed off each other. Although this book doesn’t have quite the social conscience that attracted me to Valley of the Lost, the second book in the series, it is an above average small town police procedural with very engaging characters and a satisfying puzzle to solve. Another point in its favour is that you could easily read it without having read the previous books in the series which is something of a rarity these days and is to be applauded as there are only so many backlists a mystery fan can contemplate.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I have read and reviewed two of the three previous books in this series: Valley of the Lost and Winter of Secrets

Negative Image has also been reviewed at Make Mine Mystery and Tome’s Devotee

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Poisoned Pen Press [2010]
ISBN 9781590587881 (for the hard cover)
Length 274 pages
Format eBook (PDF, galley)
Source from the publisher via Net Galley

Review: Winter of Secrets by Vicki Delany

Posted on by
2

On Christmas Eve in the small town of Trafalgar in British Columbia a car goes off the road into a frozen river. Despite the efforts of police and rescue workers the two men in the car, Ewan Williams and Jason Wyatt-Yarmouth who were in town with a group of friends on a skiing holiday, are pronounced dead. When he learns that there is something peculiar about one of the bodies Sergeant John Winters has to delve into events that led to the car ending up in the river. He and constable Molly Smith conduct a series of interviews with Jason’s family and friends and those townsfolk who interacted with them.

Winter of Secrets shares some of the same features as Valley of the Lost, the second book in this series. We see the same depiction of the intricacies and interconnectedness of small town life and most of the likable characters return.  I do like the way John Winters approaches his investigations in a very logical fashion and much of what he digs up comes from ‘old-fashioned’ policing rather than forensic clues. At one point in the story he mentions that the only TV detective he ever liked was Columbo and there are similarities in the way that both approach cases by listening to what people say (and what they don’t say). Delany does a great job depicting the learning curve experienced by a relative newcomer to police work. In this book Molly Smith has just finished her first year as a probationary constable and so she’s still uncertain and makes a few mistakes and this has a very realistic air to it.

However I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the previous one and the one big difference was that I didn’t care a jot about the two victims or the annoying friends and family they left behind. It became clear quite early on that the two men who died were spoiled, rich young men who treated the women they knew pretty terribly. The group of friends they had travelled with were the kind of whingeing people I would go out of my way to avoid in real life and Jason’s parents and sister are a textbook dysfunctional family. Of course I don’t believe that anyone ‘deserves’ to die but in fiction I become much more engaged with a story if can identify with the victims in some way or empathise with the loss felt by those left behind and here I didn’t experience either feelings.

The book is well-plotted (though I’m not a huge fan of cliffhanger endings) and, once again, I thoroughly enjoyed Carrington MacDuffie’s excellent narration. Delany writes really solid small town police procedurals and this is no exception. In fact her depiction of the grudging dependence that small towns who rely on tourists for employment and income shone through really well here, but, for me, a more sympathetic victim would have rounded off this listening experience more satisfyingly.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5

Narrator: Carrington Macduffie; Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks [2009]; ISBN: N/A (downloaded from audible.com; Length: 8hrs 58mins

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Winter of Secrets has been reviewed at Lesa’s Book Critiques and Mysterious Reviews

Review: Valley of the Lost by Vicki Delany

Posted on by
13

Title: Valley of the Lost

Author: Vicki Delany

Publisher:Blackstone Audiobooks [2009]

ISBN: n/a (digital download via audible.com)

Length: 9hours 34 minutes

Narrator: Carrington MacDuffie

In the small town of Trafalgar in the hinterland of British Columbia, Canada, ageing hippie Lucky Smith finds the body of a young woman in the woods near the women’s support centre where she works. Lying by the body is a crying baby boy. The police, including Lucky’s daughter Molly who is a probationary constable, soon realise that the dead woman has hidden her past well and they struggle to piece together what might have happened to the young mother. Some are quick to write the death off to the relapse of a heroin junkie but Sergeant John Winters wonders if there’s more to it. As the investigation proceeds Lucky looks after the baby, fighting off a determined social services officer in the process.

Although the mystery itself unfurls relatively slowly it doesn’t matter as there’s lots going on and I was quickly drawn into the world the author had created here. As is the way with small towns, many of the people know each other and the author does a great job of introducing the various characters and making the reader care about them by showing snippets of their day-to-day lives. Alongside the Smith family and the engaging lead investigator there are a host of other people who play roles that may not have anything to do with the mystery but are still people you want to know more about. If you’d suggested to me before I read this book that someone could make me even vaguely interested in a character who was an ex-super model I’d have laughed at you but Eliza, John Winters’ wife, is a delight as she wrestles with her own career crisis while supporting her husband in his demanding job.

The book is a combination whodunit and police procedural and offers the best of both. Winters doggedly interviews and re-interviews people who he thinks might know something about the dead girl’s past. In this way the various potential suspects are slowly fleshed-out and the pool narrowed down. The resolution is ultimately quite complex but credible within the context of the story and very easy to follow.

I’m also thrilled to point out that Delany has succeeded in incorporating the political/social commentary into the story via character traits or story threads as authors are supposed to do. Unlike this book and this one, both recent reads, I didn’t feel like I was being lectured to like a naughty (or stupid) schoolgirl and so was far more willing to contemplate the important themes being raised in the story.

This was a thoroughly entertaining book with a whole host of great characters and a multi-faceted plot and I’ll be looking for more books by Vicky Delany.

Audio-book specific comments: The narration is excellent with MacDuffie managing to make it clear which of the many characters is speaking with only minor differences in her tone or inflection. Normally I listen to audio books while doing something else but with this one I sat in my reading chair and listened to the last hour or so just to enjoy being read to.

My rating 4/5

Other stuff

Reviewed by Lesa at Lesa’s Book Critiques

Reviewed by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise (whose review prompted me to seek this book out)

This is the second book in Delany’s series featuring John Winters and Molly Smith and she has also written some standalone novels. As well as having her own website Delany is one of the authors who publish the group blog Type M for Murder (one of the group blogs I didn’t feature in last Sunday’s post about this phenomenon)