The way to heaven

Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson

Dundurn Press, 304 pages, $24.99

Toronto author Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson’s debut novel is a stylish throwback to the hard-hitting crime thrillers of the classic era, centered around a compelling and entertaining protagonist. Set largely in Toronto’s Parkdale neighborhood over two days in July 1965, the novel introduces us to Patrick Bird, a failed police cadet turned private investigator specializing in tracking down unfaithful spouses in divorce cases. When his no-nonsense boss sends him on the trail of a missing daughter from a wealthy family, he becomes entangled in family secrets, a strange, cult-like evangelical group operating out of a local church, and an unsolved bank robbery from over a decade ago.

Stefanovich-Thomson has peppered his narrative with references to Toronto landmarks from the ’60s – the Riverboat Café, the Bohemian Embassy, ​​the Boulevard Club, the Edgewater Hotel – and his dialogue from the period is downright sparkling. But the real attraction is Bird, a novice private investigator whose superficial confidence masks conflicting ideas about how to proceed as he learns more about the teenager he’s been tasked with finding. The compressed time frame gives the narrative a driving element, and the author is adept at inserting plot twists at appropriate and surprising intervals, giving the story a vibrancy that keeps the reader relentlessly pushing forward.

Only one survives

Hannah Mary McKinnon

Mira, 400 pages, $23.99

En route to a promotional event in the Catskills, a women’s band’s van goes off the road during a snowstorm, killing one member of the Bittersweet and seriously injuring another. The four survivors, along with a documentary filmmaker, seek refuge in a nearby abandoned cabin, where the situation worsens as they try to survive the night.

This scenario is just one aspect of Hannah Mary McKinnon’s Mousetrap-esque novel, the first half of which jumps back and forth between the aftermath of the accident and the narrative past, where we meet Vienna and Madison, the two founding members of Bittersweet, and learn how their high school friendship led to early success as a duo and then as a full-fledged pop-rock quintet. The other band members provide color, but the real focus is on the two singers and songwriters – their difficult family histories, their close bond based on shared musical tastes (80s classics like the Go-Go’s, the Bangles and Blondie are everywhere) and their increasing rivalry for the spotlight.

But it’s the second half of the novel that shatters expectations and calls into question everything the reader has previously thought about the characters and their motivations. Not all of it works – it requires a suspension of disbelief that occasionally strains too much – but McKinnon deftly manages to keep readers turning the pages, and makes for a devilishly entertaining journey, provided you don’t think about it too much.

broiler

Eli Cranor

Soho Press, 336 pages, $36.95

Arkansas-born writer Eli Cranor, who won the Edgar Award for his first novel, Don’t Know Tough, is back with a third book about Gabby and Edwin, two undocumented Mexicans who work grueling ten-hour shifts in inhumane conditions at a chicken factory (Gabby wears a diaper on the assembly line because she’s not allowed bathroom breaks). When Edwin is fired for being two minutes late, he decides to take particularly unwise, not to say criminal, revenge on his callous boss (who is seeking a promotion and only knew about Edwin’s tardiness because he was late himself).

Cranor writes in the style of Ozark noir, his narrative split between the Mexican have-nots and the privileged white rich, represented by factory manager Luke Jackson and his wife, a member of a support group for new mothers. Despite all the genre trappings, Broiler is a character-driven novel, its central quartet serving as piquant symbols of a capitalist system ruthlessly geared to keeping classes (and, not coincidentally, races) separate and unequal. There’s no didactic preaching here: Cranor sets up his scenario and lets it play out without any overt moralizing, allowing his message about a rigged system to seep through the increasingly desperate scenario.

Known to the victim

KL Armstrong

Doubleday Canada, 334 pages, $25

The same cannot be said of the latest novel by KL Armstrong, author of three previous psychological thrillers. Armstrong’s book reads more like an ethics textbook than a thriller.

“Known to the Victim” is dedicated to the trendy topic of true crime podcasts. Amy Gibson is the voice behind the series of the same name, which is dedicated to examining violence in relationships. Amy knows what she’s talking about: eight years ago, her mother was murdered by a boyfriend. When her half-brother, who was her rock and support in her ongoing grief, is accused of abusing his partner, Amy struggles with her loyalties.

Armstrong, who writes young adult and supernatural thrillers under the name Kelley Armstrong, peppers her novel with the language of therapy—double trauma, gaslighting, triggering—and constantly gives the reader clues about how to respond to a given situation. Worse, for a graduate student and supposedly accomplished podcaster, Amy proves spectacularly obtuse as she tries to figure out what’s going on—something a reader should be able to do for themselves long before she does.