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Vicki Delany leaves the contemporary British Columbia wilderness of her Smith and Winters series for the Klondike of 1898. The town of Dawson and the promise of immense riches have attracted the desperate, the daring, the restless, and the foolish from the entire continent, indeed the world, all in pursuit of the gold rumoured to be lying about just waiting to be forked up and pocketed. But after only a few months, the more easily accessible ore deposits had been claimed by the locals and the hordes of hopeful stampeders were left to see what they could make by thawing out the permafrost and digging underground. Those who did do well in Dawson that year were the entrepreneurs who sold supplies to the miners and the businesspeople who catered to their need for shelter and entertainment. Fiona MacGillivray is one of these, proprietress of the Savoy, the best dance hall in town, mother of a twelve-year-old son, and possessor of an intriguing, if chequered, past. She came over the Chilkoot Pass, determined to leave that past behind and make a living for herself and her boy and so far, has carved out a prominent and respected position for herself in the frontier community. All is going well until a reporter for a San Francisco paper, Jack Ireland, is found dead, his throat cut, on Fiona's precious dance hall stage. There is no shortage of suspects - Ireland had managed to alienate virtually everyone in town in his very brief stay, but Fiona is most worried about one of her girls whom Ireland had taken out on a date and beaten up. Convinced of her innocence, Fiona does what she can to find the real culprit. The plot here is only just sufficient a device on which to hang this entertaining portrait of Dawson in its heyday. The real attraction is Fiona MacGillivray herself, hard-headed businesswoman, slightly vain, a tigress of a mother, and with a lively past for one so relatively young. Delany doles out details of Fiona's prior life in tantalizing bits, leaving much to be revealed, we presume, in a later installment. There is a whiff of romance too, being held for a later date if Delany continues the series. Readers who enjoy historical mysteries in which the facts are accurate but not oppressive and heroines who are good, but by no means too good to be true, will hope that she does indeed bring Fiona back and soon.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, April 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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