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Canadian author Joan Boswell writes books made to measure for the reader who enjoys a true cozy amateur sleuth mysteries. There is some police involvement mainly with Rhona Simpson who has previously locked horns with the main character but Toronto artist Hollis Grant works alone when she is sleuthing. When her friend and neighbor's brother Danson Lafleur goes missing, Hollis agrees to look for him since the cops are not taking his disappearance seriously, setting out to hunt for clues before the police get involved. The body of a man whose identity is unknown but who might be Danson and a series of killings of drug addicts force the police to finally get involved. It soon becomes clear that Danson is on a self-proclaimed mission to find deported criminals who have returned to Canada, one of which has killed his fiancée. Hollis finds a mysterious roommate of his and links to the Russian mob but will she find Danson and will he still be alive? I found this mystery to be very uneven. The opening chapter and the dialogue are very well done and realistic. There are quite a lot of characters, some of which are well defined like Hollis' friend Candace and her little daughter Elizabeth, some less so, drawn with too broad strokes that don't let us really know them. The police involved are far from the best in their field and make quite a few basic errors. They receive precious little help from Hollis who finds lots of reasons to keep facts from them. It is mostly a ballet of "I should tell the police what I have found out / I should have told the police what I knew," which gets tedious at times. Despite those irritating elements, the characters and storyline are pleasant to read about, the story flows well and the mystery is good enough to keep our attention up to the end which has a satisfying solution.
Reviewed by Nicole Leclerc, March 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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