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Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is 61. Not only is she recently divorced, but she also has a bad back, a mother who is trying to make her lose weight, and acting command of an understaffed division of what is here called the Ontario Police Services. Port Dundas, a fictional town in fictional Westmuir County in a wholly invented region of Ontario, is not exactly a hot-bed of crime; it hasn't seen a homicide in four years, and that one was a bar fight that got out of hand. So although a penny-pinching central command has kept her short of resources, Hazel has been well able to cope with whatever crime has come her way. All that changes when Delia Chandler, an old woman dying of cancer who once had had an affair with Hazel's father, is found dead, her throat cut, her face contorted, and her body strangely drained of blood. It will emerge that Delia is not the first to suffer such an end, nor will she be the last, but it is her case that has managed to attract the curiosity of a police officer able to see beyond the local circumstances to connect it with another death and then another. Finally it becomes clear that Delia forms part of a string of deaths that span the country. Hazel is determined to prevent further atrocities, even if she has to violate protocol, departmental boundaries, and even reasonable caution to do it. Lately there has been a noticeable tendency for mainstream novelists to attempt a cross-over into what they may hope to be the lucrative field of crime fiction. Some, like Booker-winner John Banville, rebrand themselves under a pseudonym; others publish under their own names. Thus Sebastian Faulks's ENGLEBY and Russell Banks's recent foray into historical crime, THE RESERVE. THE CALLING may represent another entry in the cross-over stakes. Inger Ash Wolfe is the pseudonym of what is coyly termed "a well-known North American writer," according to the jacket copy, one whose identity has caused less heated debate than perhaps the publicists had hoped. Readers of the novel might be forgiven for concluding that it is the pen-name for not one, but at least two authors, since the book has a peculiarly schizoid quality that is hard to explain otherwise. By far the best parts of it have to do with Hazel, a strong, attractive character with a dry sense of humour and a sharp intelligence. She is smart, capable, and well-grounded in her community and her job. The men and women she works with are fully realized characters and interesting in their own right. Her mother is marvellous, a redoubtable 87-year-old, the former mayor of Port Dundas, and the centre of a circle of equally formidable whisky-drinking old women. But then there's the hyperactive plot that draws the reader from the Pacific coast of Vancouver Island all the way to the Bay of Fundy via a string of corpses that have been drained of blood and savaged after death in ways that do not bear describing but which unfortunately are, and in meticulous detail. This is altogether a different sort of fiction and it meshes poorly with the commonsensical Hazel, tasked with the job of figuring out what is going on. By the time the novel judders to its conclusion, readers might feel that there are not merely two authors at work, but an entire committee to which Dan Brown has been seconded for his expert advice. Still, despite its Grand Guignol excesses and Gothic improbabilities, the book has an undeniable narrative drive that will keep readers turning the pages. Moreover, it has Hazel Micallef and we can look forward to her reappearance in the near future, once, of course, she has recovered from back surgery. THE CALLING is promised as the first in a series, and if Inger Ash Wolfe can figure out a way of keeping the extravagances under control, I for one certainly look forward to seeing what Hazel gets up to in Westmuir County the next time around.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, February 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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