The Code
By G.B. Joyce, Penguin Canada, 345 pages, $30
A crime novel that takes place in the world of sports really is a plot on the edge of a razor. The author has to put in enough information to carry the story, but he can’t overwhelm the reader. After all, no one who reads Dick Francis cares about handicapping horses and Myron Bolitar’s sports-management business certainly doesn’t teach us much about maintaining big-name athletes.
So G.B. Joyce’s debut mystery, The Code, set in the world of big-league hockey, has its work cut out. Luckily, G.B. Joyce is Gare Joyce, one of Canada’s finest sportswriters, an award-winner who knows how to tell a tale, which makes The Code simply terrific.
I must confess that I know little about hockey. The nice little chart at the beginning of the book, which I presume represents Brad Shade’s lifetime hockey career, may as well have been written in Swahili. However, the first line of prose is: “Understand that the league is a systematic organization of hatreds.” From then on, the reader is hooked.
Joyce takes us on a brief, witty and devilishly clever trip into those hatreds, told by our guy, Brad, whose career ended badly with a torn ligament, whose agent lost his millions in lousy real-estate investments and who is, as we meet him, standing in the Frankfurt airport trying to explain that his passport, ticket and computer have been stolen.
Brad’s tale moves back to the United States and then to Toronto, where he is planning to play in an exhibition game under a legendary coach. When the coach is killed, Brad finds himself following a very twisted trail.
This is a very finely tuned plot, with some glitches that are forgivable because the writing and characters are so very, very good. There’s plenty of behind-the-lines chat to amuse the hockey fans, but even if, like me, you have never watched a puck, you will find Brad Shade and The Code good to the final paragraph.
The Girl in the Wall
By Alison Preston, Signature Editions, 233 pages, $16.95
Winnipeg’s Alison Preston is becoming one of Canada’s most consistently good crime writers. The Girl in the Wall, her fifth novel, is as funny and smart as the last four, but it takes plotting to a new high.
“Morven Rankin was born dead. … It ran in her family.” That opening line is irresistible and creepily original. It takes us right into the head of an unusual woman whose story occupies the first half of the novel set in Preston’s favourite location, the Norwood Flats neighbourhood in Winnipeg.
The second half of the tale takes us to the present day and former police inspector Frank Foote, whose retirement business is home renovation. When a wall is opened up, a skeleton appears. Work halts and the investigation begins. The relationship of the body to Morven Rankin (victim, witness or worse) brings us back into the historical mystery, and it’s one of Preston’s best ever.
Stifling Folds of Love
By John Brooke, Signature Editions, 317 pages, $18.95
It has been 10 years since John Brooke’s last Aliette Nouvelle mystery, and that is far, far too long. Brooke is easily one of Canada’s best crime writers, and this series, set in the environs of Strasbourg (the far environs) at France’s eastern border, is a real delight. Nouvelle is a strong character with a charming voice, but the books would not be as good if it were not for Commissaire Claude Neon and his extremely French police team. We are in Fred Vargas territory here.
