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Halifax criminal lawyer Monty Collins and his sidekick, Father Burke, find themselves in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Monty’s wife has relatives in Cape Breton and the family and Burke are on vacation there. They are all immediately thrown into the mystery of the disappearance of Bonnie MacDonald, twelve-year-old beloved member of the Celtic band, Clan Donnie. She has been gone two weeks and there is no sign of her.
Local RCMP members use their knowledge of the area, Monty Collins uses his knowledge of the criminal mind, Father Burke his connections in the Catholic community and ten-year-old Normie, Monty’s daughter and her cousins, apply their ingenuity to help find Bonnie and her kidnappers.
Anne Emery situates her story inside the culture and history of Cape Breton’s Celtic community. Mostly through Normie, we are introduced to this rural and remote area’s culture and traditions. Normie has second sight, like her great grandmother Morag, and she stumbles onto some very eerie situations.
A number of possible suspects appear, including Bonnie’s father, her stepfather, a friend, a weird groupie of Monty’s Band Functus, and a very volatile EMT technician. Slowly, most of these people are eliminated. And then someone is murdered who might have valuable evidence.
The mystery is finally unraveled in a pretty scary scene with Normie, Morag and the villains, when the two villains turn into the beasts that were hidden inside them.
This is the tenth in the Collins-Burke mystery series. Anne Emery has won a number of awards including an Arthur Ellis for her work. I found all the Celtic lore a bit off-putting and the large cast of characters sometimes confusing, but I have not read any of the earlier books so I feel I should suspend judgment until I read at least the first in the series, SIGN OF THE CROSS, which was recommended to me by a fellow Nova Scotian who loves the series but said I should start at the beginning. The novel is ingeniously plotted and I suspect Collins and Burke would become beloved by this tenth book. I am intrigued enough to read SIGN OF THE CROSS next.
§ Susan Hoover is a playwright, independent producer and retired college English teacher. She lives in Nova Scotia.
Reviewed by Susan Hoover, January 2017
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