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Barbara Fradkin scores again with this eighth book featuring Inspector Michael Green of the Ottawa police. This is my third read in the series and I plan to look up her earlier novels as I am definitely hooked on this guy and this writer. Fradkin is particularly skilful at interweaving Green's evolving family and professional interactions with the development of her complex plot lines. She starts this story using Green's daughter Hannah's observations as she rides an Ottawa bus. Later they will prove vital in helping the police to find a missing person. Ottawa is experiencing a major snowstorm and Dr Brandon Longstreet has called the police to report his fiancée Meredith Kennedy missing. At first the police are not overly concerned, attributing Meredith's disappearance to bride's cold feet but the prominence of the Longstreets commands attention. Brandon's mother Elana is a distinguished lawyer with lots of political connections. When the public is made aware that someone may be buried in the snow, a snowplow operator too tired to check out that bump he experienced the night of Meredith's disappearance goes back to check it out. When he finds a woman's body he runs away but a neighbourhood watcher reports his suspicious actions to the police. The Longstreets are summoned but Brandon cries out in relief, "It's not Meredith." Now the mysteries multiply - whose is the body, where is Meredith, is there any connection between the two women especially as Hannah is able to report that she observed Meredith on the bus receiving a disturbing phone call after which she got off close to where the woman was found. Also, why is Green's old boss, Superintendent Adam Jules, interested in the missing person? Tracing calls on the dead woman's cell phone, the police are led to Montreal. It seems Meredith was in touch with this woman and had been there looking up information on the Longstreet family. Green goes to Montreal and what he finds out will reveal the identity of the missing woman and how the two cases are connected. (Fradkin's Montreal readers will be delighted with the references to Green's luncheon trip to Schwartz's, famous for its smoked meat, as well as other Montreal icons.) In the meantime, Brandon has received a one-word message from Meredith which confirms she is alive. But where? With the reluctant help of Meredith's parents, Brandon and subsequently the police figure out where she might be. Is she hiding because she is the murderer? The chase is on. All will be revealed of course, but not without some surprising twists and turns which make this my favourite of the Green series that I have read to date. Fradkin just keeps getting better. § Ann Pearson is a photographer and retired college Humanities teacher who lives in Montreal
Reviewed by Ann Pearson, December 2010
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