DARKNESS AT THE STROKE OF NOON
By Dennis Richard Murphy, HarperCollins, 380 pages, $21.95
There's good and bad news for readers of this terrific Canadian thriller set in the Arctic. The good news is that Dennis Murphy, a documentary filmmaker and television writer, has created a cast of marvellous characters and placed them in a meaningful, up-to-date plot in a unique setting. Fast-paced and at times very funny, Darkness at the Stroke of Noon is sure to be short-listed for an Arthur Ellis Award.
The bad news is that there will not be a sequel. Murphy died shortly before his first and only novel was published.
The setting is the High Arctic, where an archeological team has discovered a diary from the ill-fated 1840s Franklin Expedition. The diary is important in establishing boundaries and borders, since global warming means Arctic thawing, and who owns what as the fabled Northwest Passage opens up could mean billions of dollars.
The Arctic research team is headed by brilliant archeologist Dr. Richard Kneisser, who discovered the Franklin journal. His American employers send FBI agent Ruby Cruz to bring him and the valuable book back to the United States. But Ruby arrives at a crime scene. Kneisser and the expedition photographer murdered.
Enter knockabout RCMP Sergeant Booker Kennison, not the Mounties' favourite member. It's two days until the polar winter descends, plunging the camp into months of freezing darkness. Kennison has to solve a murder and unravel a puzzle.
Murphy had a gift for creating great characters, and Kennison and Cruz are naturals – Cruz's quickie insights into Canadian character, myth and lore are alone worth the price of the book. We also get evocative visual details of the High Arctic, and the descriptions of life in an archeological camp are superb.
Murphy left just enough tag ends to his story to let us know he intended to take Kennison on another adventure. It's a shame that he won't be able to.
THE LANGUAGE OF BEES
By Laurie R. King, Bantam, 432 pages, $28.95
This is the ninth novel in the great Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series by King, one of the best U.S. crime novelists. This may not be the best, but it is going to be one of the more controversial. Do not, whatever temptation you might feel, read the ending first.
It's 1924, and Holmes and Russell are returning to England from their American adventure. Mrs. Hudson, their home in Sussex and Holmes's bees await. But there's bad news too, and one hive appears to be in difficulty.
Before they can uncover the mystery of the missing bees, Holmes's past appears. Damian Adler, his illegitimate son by the famous American singer (of A Scandal in Bohemia ) appears. Damian is no friend to his parent, but his wife and child have disappeared and he needs help to find them. Sherlock can do no more than go with him to London, leaving the hives and the home to Mary.
Naturally, this won't do. Soon, Mary is off to London to join Sherlock and his brother, Mycroft, in the search. It all ends in a classic dash up through Britain to the wilds of Orkney.
The premise is getting thin and the characters are stretched, and there's a sense that this series is almost written out. But King has at least one more trick up her sleeve, and in the final pages, she lets it out.
THE COLD LIGHT OF MOURNING
By Elizabeth J. Duncan, St. Martin's, 277 pages, $27.95
