The Inspiration for Body on Baker Street

My last post was a review of Body in Baker Street by Vicki Delany. I enjoyed the book as I have enjoyed all of the books I have read that were written by Vicki.

After completing the book I wondered if the inspiration for the murder could have come from the book of another Canadian mystery writer. 

I emailed Vicki and she promptly and candidly responded. I appreciate her willingness to reply to my questions. Our exchange is below

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Vicki

I enjoyed reading Body on Baker Street and will have a review posted shortly.

In reading the book I was struck by the use of a bottle of poisoned water as the method of murder. I thought of Deadly Appearances, the first book in the Joanne Kilbourn series by Gail Bowen. In that book the fictional Premier of Saskatchewan, Andy Boychuk, is speaking at a political picnic. A carafe of water is sitting upon the trailer bed from which he is addressing the crowd. He dies after drinking the water which has been poisoned.

I was wondering if you might have been inspired by Deadly Appearanecs in your choice of death for Renalta Van Markoff. If not I would be interested knowing what led you to the poisoned water.

I admired your creation of a fictional series with a specific plot in a Body on Baker Street. I was reminded of Another Margaret in the Randy Craig series by Janice Macdonald. In that book Macdonald also created a fictional author and series. Considering your very varied sleuths might you have been tempted to actually write a series featuring the Desdemona Hudson you created within Body on Baker Street?

If you are able to reply and are willing, I would put up this email and your response, as a post.

All the best.

Bill Selnes

Hi, Bill. Always happy to talk books.

I have read Deadly Appearances, as I have most of the Kilbourn series, but that was a very very long time ago.  Probably when the book first came out.  So I don’t remember any details.  In my case, the setting came first – the book signing – meaning I wanted the author to drop dead in front of the room full of people. I then had to think about how to accomplish that. Poison was the obvious way of doing that , short of having someone stand up with a gun and shoot her – not much mystery there.  But it had to be obvious that the poison was taken within the last few minutes, so that the people in the room, and no others, would be the suspects.   It also needed to be fairly obvious that it might not have been intended for someone else, as would have been the case if she’d had tea in the tea room earlier.

One of the problems with writing several cozy series is trying to come up with new and original ways of bumping people off, but keeping it polite.

Come to think of it, I have written something similar to the Desdemona Hudson series.  Have you read any of my Klondike Gold Rush mysteries? Published by Dundurn from 2008 – 2013. I never thought of it before but Fiona McGillivray in that series is somewhat similar.

Best

Vicki

Dyed in the Green by George Mercer

Dyed in the Green by George Mercer – Ben Matthews arrives at Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia as the new Assistant Chief Park Warden. The park is located in the northern part of the island and spans the island.

Matthews is joining his girlfriend, Kate Jones, a seasonal warden at the park. Life is a little more complicated with Matthews being the supervisor of Jones.

The park is in the midst of Acadian Nova Scotia. French is spoken as much as English. The Acadians see themselves as distinct from the English population.

Matthews arrives with a clear purpose. He is committed to the ideal of protecting the park from poachers. In recent years park wardens have not vigorously sought out poachers. Some local residents have been making a habit of poaching salmon and deer.

In particular, John Donald Moores views the park as a part of his regular hunting grounds. While he earns an income from commercial fishing he is a passionate hunter and fisher of salmon.

Moores is a man who believes rules and laws were meant for other people. At times contemptuous of the wardens he also views poaching as a game. There is a thrill in outwitting the wardens.

As is the way of governments throughout the world not all rules make sense. All hunting is prohibited in the park but non-commercial fishing for salmon is allowed.

Catching poachers means long lonely hours for the wardens. They will have all night patrols and stakeouts. On cold fall nights they bring sleeping bags to get some warmth.

Tensions can run high if the wardens confront a poacher. Still when murder occurs it is startling.

American readers may be surprised to know the wardens of 20 years ago and earlier did not carry firearms as they patrolled the parks. They confronted poachers, often armed, without guns themselves. Some carried guns, contrary to regulation, but many were unarmed.

Matthews fits well with the other wardens and park personnel. His staff sees him spending as much or more time as themselves on night duty.

I enjoyed learning about the life of park wardens some years ago, Parks Canada as explained by Mercer, re-organized in 2008 and there are no longer wardens. At the same time I do not think I will read another in the series.

It is an earnest book. Mercer clearly loves Canada’s national parks and the park wardens with whom he worked for over 30 years. I am sure, as with other professions, that almost all of them are dedicated to their work. At the same time I am sure that they have never thought of themselves as saints. The only flaw I could detect in Matthews is that he is a workaholic, overly dedicated, to being a warden. The other wardens except for Joe, on the verge of retirement, are equally without blemish. Joe’s flaw is a more relaxed approach to being a warden that is reflective of his age and impending retirement.

I certainly do not need sleuths to be dysfunctional individuals but they need to be real people.

The Unknown children of Ari Greene, Travis McGee and Harry Bosch

Robert Rotenberg

In Robert Rotenberg’s book, Heart of the City, there is a surprise opening for long time readers of the series. Toronto detective, Ari Greene, is returning to Canada after spending time in England after he was cleared of killing his lover, Jennifer Raglan, in the previous book, Stranglehold. With him is 20 year old, Alison Gilroy, his daughter.

Ari had never known he was a father until after Alison’s mother had died. Following instructions her solicitor contacted Greene to advise he has a daughter. Shocked but elated he travels to England. The solicitor arranges for him to meet Alison and she learns that her birth father was Greene not the unnamed New Zealander she had understood was her father. After some time together she expresses interest in going to live in Toronto and they return to Canada.

Her presence adds several dimensions to the book.

There is another generation of the Greene family. Ari’s father, Yitzhak, is delighted to have a granddaughter:

…. [He] is the opposite of Ari. Outgoing and fun, he hugged and kissed her all the time. Within days she was calling him Grandpa Y, and soon he was fixing up a room for her in the basement of Ari’s house to give her some privacy.

There is a new dynamic for Ari having an adult daughter. They are establishing a parental relationship while living together.

She becomes a part of the story through her anonymous blog, Kensington Confidential.

Alison’s unexpected entrance into the series reminded me of two other famous fictional sleuths who learned they were fathers long years after the child’s birth.

I remember being caught totally off guard over 30 years ago when I read The Lonely Silver Rain by John D. MacDonald. In the final book of the Travis McGee series he learns that he is the father of a teenage daughter, Jean, whose mother, Puss Killian, had been McGee’s lover in Pale Grey for Guilt.

Jean has an unnerving unseen presence for the normally unflappable McGee through the book as he keeps finding cat shaped pipe cleaners outside the door to his houseboat, the Busted Flush. Only at the end does he actually meet her.

It was very clear that McGee was excited by the new relationship and it is a regret that MacDonald died before he could have developed that relationship in more books. I expect Jean would have wanted to become part of McGee’s “salvage operations” but McGee, more conscious of danger for her than himself, would have unsuccessfully sought to keep her out of the operations.

A generation later Harry Bosch, in the double digit series by Michael Connelly, learns he has a 4 year old daughter, Maddie, with former FBI agent, Rachel Wish. The abrasive hard nosed detective is softened by being a father. He enters her life somewhat tentatively.

In the book series she comes to live with him after her mother is killed while Harry and Rachel are seeking to rescue Maddie from kidnappers.

In last year’s addition to the series, The Wrong Side of Goodbye, Maddie has finished high school and Harry is dealing with the emotions of her going away to university.

In the television series a different storyline is developing. Rachel and Maddie come to spend time with Harry in Los Angeles after a killing puts their safety in Las Vegas in issue.

Each of Greene, McGee and Bosch are hard men made a little softer by learning they are fathers.

I found it interesting that all 3 unknown children were girls. I do not have a theory why each of the authors chose the unknown child to be a daughter. I invite comments on the authorial choice of girls.

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Rotenberg, Robert – (2011) - Old City Hall; (2011) - The Guilty Plea; (2012) - Stray Bullets; (2012) - "R" is for Robert Rotenberg; (2013) - Stranglehold; (2017) - Heart of the City and Lawyers Hate to Lose

Wishful Seeing by Janet Kellough

Wishful Seeing by Janet Kellough – The mystery features an interesting sleuth, 59 year old Thaddeus Lewis, a minister for the Methodist Episcopal Church. He has accepted an assignment to the town of Cobourg and surrounding area. (Being set in 1853 the plot takes place before Canada was a nation. Now the province of Ontario the area was then known as Upper Canada.) He will ride a circuit conducting services in the small communities near Cobourg. To aid him is a young minister, James Small, nearing completion of his studies.

Needing a housekeeper Lewis invites his 15 year old niece, Martha Renwell, to join him in Cobourg. Glad to get away from the chores and drudgery of her family hotel Renwell becomes her grandfather’s housekeeper. She is a bright and spirited young woman starting to find her way in the world.

The plot differs from most mysteries I have read, whether set in the present of the past, in that there are descriptions of religious services led by Lewis. In particular, having been challenged by an itinerant Baptist preacher, Lewis meets his challenger to debate the issue of whether the Bible requires full immersion for baptism.

So many people gather for the debate that the meeting is moved outside the hall where the meeting had been scheduled. There is a spirited discussion whether the King James version of the Bible is an accurate translation from the original Biblical texts. They go on to argue scripture on what the Bible ordains with regard to baptism.

Not long after the Great Baptism Debate a man, Paul Sherman, is found murdered on an island in Rice Lake.

Suspicion falls on George Howell and his wife, Ellen. Witnesses have seen a man and a woman, dressed in a distinctive blue dress, rowing from the island. When the investigating officer goes to the Howell farm he finds Ellen washing such a blue dress with a significant stain that he believes to be a bloodstain.

While she is arrested and held in jail pending the trial her husband has disappeared. Known as the “Major” he has acquired a reputation for dealing in land needed for the Cobourg to Peterborough Railway under construction. Disputed titles were a staple of the Courts of that era.

Mrs. Howell lacks funds for a lawyer. Lewis, wanting her to have good representation and attracted to the lady, arranges for a young Toronto barrister, Townsend “Towns” Ashby, to take up the defence.

The book shifts to a legal mystery with Ashby as the plot proceeds through the Grand Jury hearing and later the trial for murder.

Ashby, while lacking experience, works hard to prepare for a trial bound to gain significant publicity.

It was intriguing to read how a trial was conducted 150 years ago. 

Wishful Seeing is a good book. The characters and plot are interesting. I would read another in the series. It was the 3^rd book from the shortlist for the 2017 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. I am finding the shortlist slower going this year.

Michael Helm Discusses After James as Crime Fiction

In my last post I put up an email letter to author Michael Helm on whether he considered his book, After James, to be crime fiction. I appreciate he promptly responded. Below is his email and another email I sent to him. He advised in a further email I could post his first email.

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Dear Bill,

Thanks for getting in touch. It's always good to hear from readers -- I really do appreciate anyone who spends time with one of my books -- and to hear from anyone I'm guessing might be a Rider fan.

I can only say that I was surprised and delighted to be recognized by the Arthur Ellis Awards. Awards nominations bring more readers. It's true that After James, though it employs some of the devices of popular genre fiction, and considers popular fiction as a sort of theme, doesn't conform to the traditional mystery-resolution pattern of most crime fiction (there might be a sort of solution to the mysteries, but maybe it's provisional, and doesn't appear where we expect it to). Maybe the novel's intentions, what it hopes to offer readers, aren't those of traditional crime novels. But of course it's also true that some crime novels share the human aesthetic concerns of literary fiction, and that literary novels often fit genre categories of play against them consciously.

One benefit of awards lists is that they get people talking seriously about books. I'm happy the Arthur Ellis list has begun another conversation.

Good luck with your reading, Bill.

Yours,

Michael

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To: Michael

Thank you for your prompt reply.

As you did not mention not posting your reply it is my intention to post it tomorrow night. If you would like it kept private I would request an email tomorrow before the evening.

You are correct that I am a fan of the Riders. My interest in writing and sports led me to start writing a sports column. This year is my 40^th season covering the Riders. I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy writing about sports. In 2013 I was inducted into the Football Reporters of Canada wing of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. I am the first reporter to be inducted who writes for a weekly newspaper.

In case you are interested I include a copy of this week’s column on the late Don Matthews as a part of this email.

All the best.

Bill

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Helm, Michael - (2017) - Another James and Continuing on Another James and What Makes a Book Crime Fiction?

What Makes a Book Crime Fiction?

My previous two posts have discussed the complex plot of Another James. This post in the form of a letter to the author, Michael Helm, contains my thoughts upon the book.

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Melfort, Saskatchewan

Dear Michael,

As part of my annual reading and reviewing I have been reading the shortlist for the 2017 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Fiction Novel. The second book I read from the shortlist was your book, After James.

The last two posts on my blog, Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan, deal with the plot of the book. My third post will be this letter. If you are able to reply and agree to the posting of your reply I will put it up on the blog.

I consider After James a finely written work of literary fiction. My challenge in reading the book was that I was expecting to read a work of criminal fiction since it was on the shortlist.

My expectations interfered with my reading of the book. I kept expecting it to be crime fiction I recognized and my expectations were never realized. Whether expectations should have affected my reading is a reflection for a future post.

I see After James as exploring the mystery of “mystical consciousness” - a phrase in the book I found apt. The first part of the book explored in depth a drug induced state of such consciousness. Much of the second part was focused on mystical consciousness in poetry. The third part delved into the past for an apocalyptic vision of the future.

Unfortunately, I was looking for a crime or crimes and their resolution rather than a philosophical and literary exploration of the mysteries of mind and consciousness. Literary fiction with mystery elements does not fit my conception of crime fiction.

The Crime Writers of Canada set out the following with regard to criteria for the Arthur Ellis Awards:

The Arthur Ellis Awards are for CRIME WRITING, and are not restricted to mystery writing. Crime-writing encompasses far more than the traditional whodunit. The crime genre includes crime, detective, espionage, mystery, suspense, and thriller writing, as well as fictional or factual accounts of criminal doings and crime-themed literary works.

It is hard for me to see why After James was submitted for the Crime Fiction Novel Award. I am not saying crime fiction should be circumscribed by rules such those put forward by Monsignor Knox in the 1930’s. I am in favour of the definition of crime fiction being flexible but I find it a stretch to see Another James as crime fiction.

Beyond the exploration of mystical consciousness there are factual mysteries being “investigated” in each section of After James but they are the settings for penetrating the human mind. Am I being too literal in expecting the plot of a book being considered for Best Crime Novel to have a crime or crimes at the heart of the book?

If having a series of unsolved mysteries was to reflect the ambiguity in real life of resolving crime it was too obscure a theme for me. I waited in vain to see a recognizable plot of crime fiction in After James. Looking back on the shortlists I have read in recent years I never had difficulty in seeing them as crime fiction.

In the introduction to an interview with you on CBC radio the host, Shelagh Rogers, echoed several reviewers in saying the book has elements of the mystery, gothic horror and apocolpytic genres.

You told her that you sort of like reading detective novels. You continued that you love reading the first half of detective novels but usually get bored at that point.

I want to ask you directly whether you consider After James a work of crime fiction. If you do I would appreciate your thoughts on what makes the book crime fiction.

For most purposes I do not think designating a book as being a part of a genre significant but when Awards are being given I think it is important that the book be a part of the genre for which the Award is being given.

Before closing I did not realize, until doing some research on your life, that we share growing up in rural Saskatchewan and holding a degree from the University of Saskatchewan.

Thank you for considering my letter.

Regards.

Bill Selnes

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As I put up this post I do not have a reply from Michael. Should he reply and agree to the response being posted I will put it up in a later post.

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Helm, Michael - (2017) - Another James and Continuing on Another James

After James by Michael Helm Continued

In this post I continue my review of After James by Michael Helm. In the second portion of the book the story revolves around James. As set out at the end of my last post he has come to Rome to analyze poems for August Durant who is convinced that the author of a poetry website, Three Sheets, has knowledge of his disappeared daughter.

Durant's conviction is based on a line in a poem:

       The sun winks and we play blind.

Durant had said those words to his daughter in their last conversation before she went missing.

Part of Durant's own analysis has been technical:

       You might know that in poetry the term "chiasmus" refers to
       a reflecting rhetorical device, as if a mirror has been set down 
       in the middle of a line or stanza. The primary early source is 
       Scripture:
             A                  B                B              A
        the first shall be last and the last shall be first

       The ABBA structure can be made more complex, as in 
       ABCDDCBA, or disguised through separation so that each 
       letter is on a different line or so the ABCD is in one line, and 
       DCBA in another.

As he reads and thinks about the poetry James meets the lovely Amanda who has been his predecessor in studying the poems for August. She has also suffered personal loss with her brother recently killed in Guatemala. 

Each of August and James and Amanda is searching for the truth with regard to the loss of a family.

The poems have a cryptic quality providing many options for meaning.

It becomes clear that the parents of James have been murdered rather than dying in a car accident.

He travels to Turkey to seek out an explanation.

This section of the book has lots of mystery, especially mysterious strangers. It has elements of crime fiction. He ends his Turkish quest caught up in riot.

There is but a slight connection with the first section of the book.

Three hundred pages into the book the reader encounters Celia, her father and Armin Koss.

Father is an archeologist who has spent his career conducting excavations studying extinction. Celia is a virologist for a Vancouver company. Koss is a mysterious character who made money developing video games.

Father has an apocalyptic vision of the future:

        "It's time for some other organism to take over the world."      
        Her father outlined the so-called no-analog future currently 
        rounding the corner upon carbon emissions and acidification. 
       "Nothing like this has ever existed before. There's nothing to 
       compare it to. We've made something new and deadly and    
       can't stop repeating the mistake."

In the Cevennes area of France Celia and her father have a mystical experience in a cave that profoundly affects her father. There is a non-drug induced mind altering experience.

Father's conversion from "a man of science to a man of God" is accelerated.

Subsequently, Celia travels to an excavation site in Turkey. She is participating in what:

       Her father declared his last project to be finding a variant 
       genome of the Justinian plague, sixth century, thirty to fifty 
       million dead. New contagions were more accurately targeted if 
       they were known descendants of old ones.

Celia seeks samples of bacteria from long dead bodies that can be analyzed and studied to help counter modern plagues. A 2,500 year old tooth will provide the bacteria. I found the description of the extraction touching and poetic:

        He kneeled beside her and put his hands on the skull of the 
        adult female. He'd been working hard and smelled of sweet. 
        With slow delicacy he turned the face toward them and 
        removed the skull from the body.

She privately names the skull Alice.

The world still exists as the book ends and there has been no factual drawing together of the three sections of the book.

(My third post on After James will be my analysis.)

After James by Michael Helm

After James by Michael Helm – The most challenging book I have read in a long time. After James was the second book I have read on the Arthur Ellis Best Crime Fiction Novel shortlist for 2017. Its complexity means the posts I will write about the book contain spoilers.

The book opens like a mystery with a dog finding the body of a woman in a shallow grave. The dog is shot by an unknown killer. The bodies of the dog and woman are cremated.

The story proceeds with Alice, a scientist with a big pharmaceutical company in Vancouver. She has left the company over its actions with regard to a drug she has designed, “a narcotic-free neuroenhancer of generative and lateral thought. A creativity pill”. She is now “somewhere north of Georgia, south of the Canadian Shield”.

She describes her drug in a letter she is drafting to a whistleblower site:

In time it took form as a rectangular yellow pill with bevelled edges. She didn’t include (in the letter) the company’s name for the drug – Claritas .4 – it would identify Gilshey (it would come out in time, of course), and anyway it was the wrong name. The name that came to her was Alph. She designed the drug. It should have the name she gave it.

Its effects are intense:

Almost three-quarters of volunteers reported a “jump cut” feeling of having lost two or three seconds of time during composition. Many reported a sense of lucid dreaming while awake. The feeling was of some other agent authoring a part of their experience, their sense of self-command undermined by changing contexts, parallel realities. One described his lab session, going to play tennis, and in the middle of a long rally seeing himself in a staged swordfight against dozens of foes, as if in an old swashbuckler movie. In the lab they called this the Daffy effect, in reference to the Loony Tunes segment in which Daffy and his world are repeatedly redrawn by the animator midstory.

The designers speak of the drug as “an engine to accelerate the real”.

Alice is concerned over the mind altering effects of the drug. She takes the drug. The results are startling. To this moment the book has an intriguing crime fiction premise related to a death, big pharma, Aleph and a whistleblower.

Instead of continuing with that plot line, while under the effects of the drug, Alice follows up on information left behind by the wife of a couple, gone to Africa on a mission, with regard to a mysterious neighbour and his Russian wife. Eventually she meets the neighbour, Clay Shoad, a sculptor recovering from serious injuries.

Dominating his work is an amazing work:

… the shape resolved into a sculpture made from antlers wired together to form, through some closed loop of conception, a giant deer buck. It was ten feet high at the shoulder, fourteen or more at the top of its rack.

Is Alice, alone with Shoad, in danger? The implication of the opening supports risk but there is no more to this story.

Abruptly, just over hundred pages into the story James is introduced:

In truth I am only a failed poet. A failed many things. Bartender, textbook editor, doctoral student, orchestrat publicist. I have no talent but reading.

He has recently been orphaned. His parents died, ostensibly in a car accident, while working at a Turkish refugee camp near Syria.

James is hired by August Durant to analyze the poems of a poetry website, Three Sheets. Durant believes the anonymous poet has written poems that will explain why Durant’s daughter has disappeared three years earlier.

(My next post continues my review.)

The Fortunate Brother by Donna Morrissey

(20. – 907.) The Fortunate Brother by Donna Morrissey – Death in the oilfields of Alberta has reached out to crush the Now family, more than half a continent away, on the coast of Newfoundland. Lured by high paying work in the oilpatch young Chris Now left his outport community of Hampten. Six weeks later he was dead in an accident at an oil rig. The Now family is three years into a grief that has not eased. Father, Sylvanus, drunk every day refuses to even mention Chris’s name. Sister, Sylvie, is in Africa trying to safari away from her sorrow. Brother, Kyle, constantly chews his fingers. Mother, Addie, amidst her own sadness strives to instill hope but the Now’s remain a family lost in pain.

Hard times have been a constant in outport life as the cod fishery came to an end and the residents of smaller outport communities forced to move to larger towns. Sylvanus, before grief overwhelmed him, had an uncommon spirit:

The story was still told how Sylvanus thumbed his nose at the relocation money and stayed till the last fish was caught, stayed till they nearly starved, and then determined not to lose his house, took out his chain saw and cut the house in half. He then floated both halves up the bay and landed them atop this wharf and declared to his astonished Addie – This is as far as she goes. By Christ if I can’t work the sea, I’ll sleep on it. No gawd-damned mortal telling me where I sleeps.

And still the house sits upon that wharf.

Among their neighbours are Clar and Bonnie Gillard. Clar, battered as a boy, has become a battering man and Bonnie the brunt of his abuse. Kyle cannot understand why she continues to return to him assault after assault. As she does for many Addie provides comfort to Bonnie accepting her choices.

Nearby is Kate, a middle-aged woman, who lives a simple life in a small home. Kate moved in a few years ago. Quiet about her past she has a fire going most evenings outside her home. People come and go, usually bringing a six pack of beer, while Kate plays her guitar and works on the songs she is writing of her life.

There is a confrontation between Sylvanus and Clar over Clar’s provocative disruption at the cemetery where Chris is buried.

Kyle’s quick tongue lashes Clar over his loutish behavior.

Sylvanus and Kyle, so caught up in their grief over Chris, are stunned when Addie tells them she has breast cancer and will need immediate surgery. My next post will discuss illness and death in a small Canadian community.

After getting the news Kyle runs off and gets drunk. Leaving the bar he is sucker punched by Clar. Later he passes out on the wharf outside the house.

During the night Clar is killed. He has been stabbed with a knife and his body dumped into the ocean. His dog, a Labrador, has dragged the dead master ashore.

Suspicion alights upon the members of the Now family. Kyle fears his mother or father may have killed Clar in self-defence or while protecting Bonnie. Friends rally with stories to protect Kyle.

The RCMP find talkative but not informative witnesses.

It is a rare book that manages to have a credible mystery combined with high family dramas. Morrissey meets the challenge. If anything, I found myself more interested in the Now family than the murder investigation.

Morrissey in description and dialogue brings modern outport Newfoundland to life.

The sea and rocky land make for a striking landscape. The fog is an evening companion.

Morrissey has a keen ear for the language and rhythms of the islanders. I found myself sitting among the characters listening to their conversations.

The Now men find they cannot keep hiding from their grief. Addie’s cancer and Clar’s murder force them to face their sorrow.

Kyle is told:

Well, I’m grieving a son. Weigh that in your heart when you’re judging mine. I’m all he’s got. He’s lost his sense of reality. That makes him the living dead and he’s only got me to fight for him. And he don’t know that because he’s angry with me. Real angry, and he won’t let me help.

The book is so well written it flows both gracefully and powerfully. It is an excellent contender on this year’s shortlist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Canadian Crime Fiction Novel.

Shopping Perfection

Through several years of reading the Clothes in Books blog of my friend, Moira Redmond, I have become aware of descriptions of clothes in books. Janice MacDonald in her series featuring Miranda “Randy” Craig, a session lecturer in English at universities in Edmonton, is very conscious of what Randy and others are wearing.

Randy, having a modest budget for clothing, admires fine clothing but must normally purchase in moderately priced stores. Most often she is focused on the sales racks.

In MacDonald’s book Hang Down Your Head, published in 2011, one of the major characters, Barbara Finster, owns three high end women’s clothing stores, boutiques seems more appropriate considering the pricing, in Edmonton and Calgary. They are modestly called the Barbara Shoppes.

As set out in my review of the book Barbara and her brother, David, have abundant attitude as they protest a huge bequest from their mother’s estate to the University of Alberta for its Folkways collection.

Insatiably curious Randy easily draws her best friend, Denise into visiting two of the stores to see what Barbara and her Shoppes are all about.

We all have our vulnerabilities. On the drive Randy frets about whether she is dressed to enter a Barbara Shoppe. Denise does little to quell the unease:

Denise raked a clinical eye over my ensemble, which consisted of red jeans, red Birkenstock rubber clogs, and a white and red striped T-shirt …. She nodded, and said that I looked as if I’d been hauled away from my prize-winning perennial garden and had a sort of Katherine Hepburn disregard for fashion.

After Denise’s mixed blessing Randy hesitates to cross the shop threshold. Denise provides tactical advice:

“Ready, Randy? Just remember, these women can smell fear. Just try to look bored and we’ll be just fine.”

As a guy I have few, if any, qualms about whether I am properly dressed for shopping and how I will be perceived in a men’s wear store but I have been married long enough to appreciate those matters are real issues for women.

Once in the store Denise recommends trying on some clothes. They will have some “entertainment shopping”. Randy doubts she is petite enough for the Barbara Shoppe. Denise advises her not to worry for “a place like this has to have sizes for the dowagers who are rich enough to not have to worry about tennis lessons”.

She soon learns another lesson on sizing for the well-to-do woman. Normally she wears a size 12 or 14 but at the Barbara Shoppe she is a size 9.

Denise, at home in any women’s clothing store, tries on an outfit that leaves the sales representative, Pia, purring:

Denise’s suit was wheat coloured, with black and gold piping around the edges of a boxy jacket and the pocket flaps. Black and gold military buttons marched down the front. Pia pulled a black suede headband from behind her back and offered it to Denise. She was right. It was perfect, pulling back Denise’s blond hair and declaring it part of the ensemble.

Pia has a recommendation for Randy:

Pia reappeared at that moment and flourished a sailor top in front of her. It was made of a thick, cream-coloured polished cotton, and navy piping was worked into two lines around the squared-off sailor collar. My mouth must have hung open because Pia beamed with a look of self-congratulation. She had my number good.

(I have done my best to find a suitable image of the fictional middy. The above photo was the best I could see online. I welcome any reader with a better image to send me the link.)

Trying it on Randy dreams:

It was perfect. It hung just to the right length to make my hips seem controllable, and felt like silk against my skin. The long sleeves ended in cuffs that looked tailored, but somehow hid an elastic making them easy to slide into. With my hair drawn back into a braid, I looked like a young Victorian girl ready to recite “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck” for my mother’s tea party, or to be Anne Shirley’s bosom friend, Diana. I loved it. I turned to the door, and opened it. Denise and Pia were standing there, waiting, and both of them clapped spontaneously at the sight of me.

But shopping love must be priced. While reduced from $150 to $93 it remains too expensive for Randy. She leaves the store depressed. I found myself wishing her boyfriend, Steve, had been there. He would never have let her exit the store without the middy.

Denise, following a shopping principle often pressed upon me personally by Sharon, suggests they go to the other Barbara Shoppe in Edmonton to see if the middy is there at a “deeper discount”.

In the second Shoppe despair turns to joy. The middy is there in her size and marked down further because a replacement brass button has rendered it less than perfect – “[T]he rope on the anchor leads off to the left instead of the right, and it’s not top drawer brass” - though no one but an obsessive shopper would discern the flaw. For $49 Randy buys the middy.

Fewer mysteries than I would expect make clothing stores and the experience of women shopping for clothes a part of the plot.The social implications for women of budget versus luxe shopping have a dynamic of tension. Most likely I am reading the wrong mysteries for shopping scenes.

I thought MacDonald beautifully explored the pleasures and frustrations of women shopping for clothes while showing how Randy, a highly educated and confident woman, is beset with insecurities in a Barbara Shoppe. 

I rarely make a specific recommendation but this is a book for you, Moira.

****

MacDonald, Janice - (2015) - Another Margaret and Q & A; (2017) - Hang Down Your Head