Category Archives: William Deverell

I’ve (virtually) climbed Mount Logan

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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.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: E is for Environment

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I’m probably more sympathetic to environmental themes than the average reader (I’ve voted Green more than once in my life) but even so I hate being lectured to or preached at. However there are some crime fiction gems among all the well-meaning, earnest tomes that deal with environmental issues.

One of my favourite environmentally themed crime novels might be a surprise to anyone who read about my history with Wexford but Ruth Rendell’s 17th Wexford novel, Road Rage, is a terrific book. When a new motorway is due to cut through the woodland surrounding Kingsmarkham militant protesters gather. Wexford’s wife Dora would quite like to be one of them but she and several other people are kidnapped in an incidence of domestic terrorism.  The book offers quite a realistic portrayal of both sides of a complex argument and also shows Wexford at his most human, being very fearful for his wife’s safety.

The first of G. M. Ford’s novels to feature private eye Leo Waterman is another of my ‘go to’ books focusing on environmentalism. In Who in Hell is Wanda Fuca (which also vies for best title ever) Leo is asked by an old friend of his father’s, a semi-retired Mafia don, to look for his missing niece who has gotten caught up at the more extreme end of environmental politics. The book is a little bit surreal, amusing and full of over the top characters, including a bunch of homeless drunks who act as Leo’s version of Holmes’ Baker Street irregulars.

There must be something that draws together Florida, environmentalism and crime fiction as both Carl Hiassan and Randy Wayne White have written half a dozen books each combining all three themes. Another book to do so is David Liss’ The Ethical Assassin which features a killer whose sins are, to some at least, forgivable because the people he kills deserve their fate as they are perpetrators of cruelty to animals on a grand scale. The book is absurd (in a good way) and though it does get a little ‘ranty’ at a few points overall it is an entertaining read.

A recent discovery for me is Canadian writer William Deverell whose delightful legal procedural April Fool involved his aging lawyer protagonist’s wife in a dramatic environmental protest. The rural community’s old-growth forest is under threat from developers and tree house sit-ins and other shenanigans abound as the locals, and some ring-ins, try to save the area.

Another legal thriller containing a strong environmental theme is Clare Francis‘ Requiem (a.k.a. The Killing Winds). When the pregnant wife of a wealthy rock star (who may or may not be modeled on the outspokenly vegetarian former member of The Beatles) dies slowly and painfully her death is at first blamed on some preservative she used. But a lawyer with an eco-action group is convinced she died due to a new pesticide that is being tested in the area because other people have died from similar symptoms and she convinces the rock star to join the fight which soon gets very, very dirty.

Do you have any suggestions for other non-preachy environmentally themed crime fiction I should be reading?

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Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week (a book title, an author name, a subject…) Do join in the fun by reading the posts and/or contributing one of your own. You don’t have to write every week.

This is the second round of the meme which was first run from late 2009 to early 2010. My contributions that time were discussions of books with one word titles.

Extreme Reading

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I have officially completed the extreme level of the 2010 Global Reading Challenge.

This required me to read 3 books set in different countries of Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America, South America plus two books set in Antarctica and a wildcard book set in any time or place new to me. Because that wasn’t quite complicated enough I added my own slant that all the books had to be by new-to-me authors.

Participating in this challenge opened my reading up to 21 new authors, many of whom I wouldn’t otherwise have read. For some of them a single exposure will be enough but many will be reappearing on my reading list in the not too distant future. In fact I’ve already read and/or ordered additional titles from several of the terrific authors discovered on my virtual tour around the globe where I met an array of fascinating people and learned a thing or three I didn’t know.

Here’s my final list of 21 books

Africa

Antarctica

Asia

Australasia

Europe

North America

South America

Wildcard (any time or place new to me)

And here are all the places I’ve visited virtually


View Larger Map

Thanks to Dorte of DJs Krimiblog for conceiving of and hosting the 2010 Global Reading Challenge. It was a hoot and lived up to all aspects of its name and I would encourage you to sign up for the 2011 version of the challenge (in which I am reliably informed you won’t have to read books set in Antarctica to be considered an extremist).

Review: April Fool by William Deverell

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I’m counting this as the last book on the North American leg of my Global Reading challenge as well as the first stop on my Canadian Book Challenge which measures progress in terms of mountain peaks climbed so I have reached Glen Valley in Prince Edward Island (142m high).

Having settled into country life and new marriage to his next door neighbour, Arthur Beauchamp is enjoying retirement from a long and distinguished career as a criminal lawyer and Queens Counsel. However a particular April Fool’s day is destined to shake up Arthur’s new life on Garibaldi Island in British Columbia. Firstly one of his former clients, jewel thief Nick Faloon, is accused of the rape and murder of a relationship counsellor. Arthur feels an obligation to become involved in his defense because he still feels guilty about unsuccessfully defending Faloon against charges for a crime he did not commit some years earlier. On the same day Arthur’s wife Margaret, a staunch activist in their rural community, takes up residence in a tree house which has been constructed in the canopy of the area’s old-growth forest which is under threat from developers. Arthur is pressured to become involved in the legal side of the protest too.

This book is brimming with a wry, observational humour about the collection of lovable and/or odd characters that seem to inhabit tight-knit communities everywhere. Arthur is an unusual character for crime fiction being 68 and suffering from an odd assortment of self-doubts despite his successful career and happy home life. I really enjoyed his willingness to do the right thing even when he’d rather not have done and the credible way he explored his doubts about his relationship with his wife. I did groan though at the stereotypical needing someone else (i.e. a woman) to do even the simplest of household chores like turning on a washing machine.

In the city Arthur is assisted in his defense of Faloon by a colleague from his former law firm whose marriage is falling apart and Lotis, a young woman activist and law student. Although neither of them is the most reliable of people between them they do come through when it matters and they provide a lot of laughs along the way. Back home there are a plethora of characters to enjoy including the smelly poet who first shares the tree house with Margaret and near-criminals Stoney and Dog who do everything from build swimming pools to running the community’s taxi service (often with vehicles they’ve ‘borrowed’ from those they’re driving around). Nick Faloon has a relatively minor role but he too offers humour and engenders a surprising feeling of warmth towards him given he is an admitted thief.

At first I thought the mysterious element of the book was going to take a back seat to the character studies and environmental message but while it was slow to get going for the last two-thirds of the book this element is solidly imaginative and the resolution is both surprising and credible. Legal procedurals are not my favourite kind of reading but I enjoyed the way this case unfolded in court with first one side then the other seeming to have the advantage as different pieces of evidence came to light. The addition of even more quirky characters, such as the ultra-nervous clerk and the judge who is a stickler for punctuality add to the readability.

April Fool certainly offers a sense of its remote, environmentally sensitive location. I’m less sure that there was anything particularly Canadian about the setting as I could imagine similar events taking place in parts of Tasmania or any of the world’s other environmentally endangered remote locations but there could well have been some local nuances that I was oblivious to. Regardless of this the author has done a great job of depicting the passion and ingenuity involved in low-budget activism.

The book could have done with a bit tighter editing, perhaps a few less characters and one fewer red-herring thread in the legal case, but overall it was an enjoyable and unpredictable read. Its humour, setting, characters and solid plot make it the sort of reading most crime fiction fans will enjoy, especially those looking for a book with minimal blood and gore.

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My rating 3.5/5

Publisher McClelland and Stewart [2005]; ISBN 9780771027154; Length 436 pages

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April Fool has been reviewed at Crime Watch