Favorite Crime Fiction of 2022, Part III: Jim Napier

Jim Napier is a crime-fiction critic based in Canada. Since 2005, more than 600 of his reviews and interviews have appeared in newspapers and on various crime-fiction and literary Web sites, including on his own award-winning review site, Deadly Diversions. Legacy, the first entry in his Colin McDermott mystery series, was published in 2017; a sequel, Ridley’s War, came out in 2020 from FriesenPress.

• A Heart Full of Headstones, by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown):

A new book from Ian Rankin is always a source of joy. Over the past three and a half decades that Scottish author has dominated the international crime-writing scene, perfecting a subgenre that has come to be known as Tartan noir. His protagonist John Rebus personifies the independent yet dedicated copper who always seems to be squeezed between the corrupt and the corrupted, as he struggles to achieve a tiny bit of justice in the gloomy streets of Edinburgh.

To the consternation of everyone around him, Rebus is his own man, and plays by his own rules (the term “loose cannon” comes to mind). Colleagues and senior offices alike are left to cope with the consequences, and he’s never far away from a reprimand, or suspension, or worse.

In A Heart Full of Headstones (the first book in a two-novel deal with UK publisher Orion), things are very much worse. Now retired and suffering from poor health, but still working, Rebus finds himself in the dock, accused of murder. His prospects are bleak.

The ex-detective inspector had earlier been drawn into an investigation going back to his days as a young detective assigned to Tynecastle, a local nick infamous for its misconduct and misfeasance. A detective there, one Frances Haggard, is facing charges of spousal abuse, and in a bid to avoid the consequences of his actions, is threatening to go public with some of the dirty laundry at Tynecastle Station—unless his mates can find a way to make the charges go away. There are a lot of skeletons in Tynecastle’s closet, so it comes as no surprise when Haggard is soon after found stabbed to death. That only serves to intensify the investigation into the corrupted station house.

Having previously been assigned to Tynecastle, Rebus becomes a person of interest, and his own past actions are placed under the microscope. It’s not giving too much away to say that before this novel is over, more people will die—and Rebus will face the possibility of spending the remainder of his days in lock-up.

John Rebus is one of the most fascinating and complex characters in modern crime fiction, carving out a tortured path between legal justice and cosmic justice, often annoying his friends and enraging his enemies. Yet he somehow emerges from the tumult victorious in the end. This time, though, even Rebus’s own doggedness may not be enough to keep him on the streets.

• Not Your Child, by Lis Angus (Wild Rose Press):

Susan Koss is enjoying a rewarding life as a consulting family psychologist and single parent, rearing her 12-year old daughter, Maddy, in Ottawa, Ontario's upscale Glebe district, when her comfortable world is suddenly turned upside down. An elderly man named Daniel Kazan has spotted Maddy on the street. Convinced that she is his long-lost granddaughter, who vanished after her parents were killed in a vehicle accident more than a decade earlier, Daniel follows Maddy home and tries to get closer to the family. He is clearly obsessive, and Susan fears for her child’s safety.

Susan is also made personally uncomfortable by these developments. After all, she is Maddy’s birth mother, and they have been together for her daughter’s entire life. But when Susan suggests DNA tests to resolve the issue, she receives not one surprise, but two: the results indicate that Susan is not Maddy’s mother, and even more ominously, they don’t rule out the possibility that Daniel might be Maddy’s grandfather after all. This is all bad enough, to be sure, but things get a whole lot worse when Maddy suddenly disappears from the family home, and despite a thorough police search, there is no sign of her. It seems Susan’s comfortable world has finally come crushing down.

Not Your Child is among the strongest debut novels I’ve read. It is original and polished, with believable dialogue and an impressive sense of atmosphere. The characters are engaging and nuanced; the author is particularly effective in portraying the obsessed grandfather in a partly sympathetic light. With a crisp pace that keeps readers engaged until the very end, this tale is highly recommended.

• Going to Beautiful, by Anthony Bidulka (Stonehouse):

Toronto, Ontario: celebrity chef, author, and restaurateur Jake Hardy, together with his husband, successful fashion designer Eddie Kravets, are living a dream life. Comfortably ensconced in spacious digs on the top floor of a fashionable apartment building, they go from success to success, pausing only to realize just how fortunate they are.

But even dreams aren’t perfect. In one morning’s early hours, Jake is awakened abruptly by the police, who break the news that his partner’s body has been found on the ground just below their balcony. Eddie Kravets is dead.

Over the weeks that follow, Jake and the closest of those around him wrestle with a toxic mix of well-meaning sympathizers, nosy gawkers, and online gossip-mongers, all of them having the effect of ripping a bandage off the fresh wound that is now Jake’s daily reality. He finds only a tiny measure of solace in sifting through Eddie’s left-behind things. Ever the planner, Eddie had made a list of places he wanted his ashes spread. They include, enigmatically, the single word Beautiful. Further searching reveals that the word in not simply a placeholder, but an actual place in rural Saskatchewan.

Determined to honor Eddie’s final wishes, Jake begins his odyssey. He will discover along the way that, far from living up to its name, the small prairie town of Beautiful harbors more than its fair share of dark secrets—and more than one murderer.

With its richly textured and layered plot, nuanced characters, and sometimes brooding environment, Going to Beautiful moves between being a lyrical celebration of life and an unflinching exploration of the dark recesses of twisted souls. It offers an inventive and evocative journey that will keep you enthralled throughout. If you’ve never before encountered the work of Anthony Bidulka, creator of the Russell Quant private-eye series and a multiple winner of both the Arthur Ellis and Lambda Literary awards, you’re in for a real treat.

• Blind Date, by Brenda Chapman (‎Ivy Bay Press):

Successful Canadian crime writer Brenda Chapman (Shallow End, Closing Time) recently launched a new series, this one featuring an engaging amateur sleuth named Ella Tate.

Blind Date finds Ella attempting to mark out a new career for herself. Formerly a journalist working the crime beat for an Ottawa newspaper, she’s now gone online with a true-crime podcast. She’s already amassed quite a following, when an intriguing case falls into her lap. A young teacher, Josie Wheatly, has been assaulted. After leaving the hospital prematurely, she’s found in her apartment, murdered by hanging. It just so happens that the apartment where this tragedy took place used to belong to Ella, and the deceased looks remarkably similar to her. Josie even appropriated Ella’s name for online dating purposes. The implications are impossible to miss: Could Josie’s killer have mistaken that other woman for Ella herself? When two other people close to the podcaster are also victimized by violent crime, the answer seems all too clear.

Ella strives to connect the dots here, but is frustrated at every turn. Then she begins to receive ominous messages, some on her podcast, then, more ominously, on her cell phone: “You’re next, bitch.” Does the solution to all of this lie somewhere in the podcasts she’s been airing, which expose peoples’ wrongdoing? Or should she be looking closer to home? Like Angus’ Not Your Child, this yarn is set largely in Ottawa’s Glebe area, and the city has seldom looked so threatening.

Never at a loss when it comes to creating a spellbinding thriller, author Chapman draws on her considerable skills to weave a credible, well-crafted plot that will leave readers hungering for more.

• L.A. Burning, by D.C. Taylor (Crooked Lane):

From former movie and TV screenwriter David C. Taylor, L.A. Burning is a gripping read that draws upon events rooted in the real world of Hollywood in order to paint a picture altogether less glamorous, and a great deal more disturbing, than that imagined by fans of the silver screen.

Ex-street kid Cody Bonner has just been released from a five-year stretch in prison for bank robbery, and she’s a gal on a mission. While she was locked up, her twin sister, Julie, had been brutally murdered, her body washed up on a beach in Malibu. The two had been especially close. Now Cody is committed to finding out how Julie died, and why. The trail will lead her into the dark recesses of Tinseltown, a world of sleazy agents and even sleazier movie moguls. Throughout her investigation, Cody will also have to navigate the Byzantine world of her mother, a fading film star who seems less concerned about her daughter’s death than her own tenuous position in the ephemeral heights of the Hollywood firmament. Cody, though, has two things going for her: the skills she picked up while behind bars, and her own dogged determination to solve her sibling’s slaying.

L.A. Burning is a riveting tale that turns on the seamy underside of an industry built on image, power, and to some extent, perversion. Seamlessly plotted, and with compelling characters and crackling dialogue, this novel is guaranteed to satisfy.

• Fenian Street, by Anne Emery (ECW Press):

This immersive tale—set in Dublin, Ireland, during the turbulent years between 1969 and 1975, and ripe with both historical detail and real-life characters—introduces us to Seamus “Shay“ Rynne. He’s the son of Thomas “Talkie” Rynne, a former Irish Republican Army supporter who’d been interned during the Emergency—known elsewhere as the Second World War. Shay was born shortly after that war ended. Now a young man, he has come under the wing of Colm Griffith, a detective sergeant in the Garda Síochána, the Irish police force. With his support, Shay joins the Garda as a police constable.

In the impoverished neighborhood where he grew up, one filled with public housing and bent toward animosity against government officials, to be a cop is viewed as only one small step above being an informer. Shay must therefore work extra hard to earn his friends’ respect. So when Rosie McGinn, a young woman he knew from his schooling, turns up dead at the hotel where she worked, her neck bruised with fingermarks, Shay resolves to bring her killer to justice, even though it means going up against some intimidating local figures.

On the strength of that success, Shay is promoted to detective, and thereafter joins DS Griffith in tackling the case of Darragh McLogan, a member of the Irish parliament, who was found brutally murdered in his back yard following a party held there the night before. Shay’s inquiry will plumb the depths of the local power structure and even lead him to Hell’s Kitchen in New York City. This is a knotty case, made still more complicated by the fact that Shay’s own father emerges as a prime suspect in the politician’s demise.

Readers benefit from the research Emery did before penning Fenian Street. She integrates Shay Rynne’s story expertly into the larger drama of 1970s Irish politics, and delivers both with prose that fairly leaps off the pages. A propulsive and gripping mystery, to be sure.

Other 2022 Favorites: Like a Sister, by Kellye Garrett (Mulholland); When It Was Cold, by Howard Shrier (e-book, short stories); and Call Me a Cab, by Donald E. Westlake (Hard Case Crime).