The irascible Angus McLintock of the author’s earlier novels The Best Laid Plans and The High Road, is back, now as the newly minted Minister of State For International Relations in a current-era Liberal Canadian government. And so are Dan Addison his aide, who is the narrator of this tale, Muriel Parkinson, suffering from her eponymous disease in a Cumberland seniors home, and her granddaughter, Lindsay, Dan’s wife. There are several other characters from the earlier novels, and some new ones including a pair of Chechen nationalist immigrants plotting to assassinate Russia’s president during his visit to Ottawa, undercover members of Britain’s MI6, Canada’s CSIS, and Russia’s FSB, ambassadors, civil servants, and politicians, including the Prime Ministers of Canada and Great Britain, and President Pudovkin of Russia; even the Queen makes an appearance.
This is a wild and unruly story, with lots of improbable twists. It is more in the genre of the international spy thriller than the light humour of Fallis’s earlier novels, although the indomitable wittiness of the Honourable Member from Cumberland and Prescott shines through with great repartee and one liners. As Dan and Angus, handcuffed and stuffed together in the trunk of the Chechen killers’ speeding car consider their fate, Angus calmly states “Be glad I dinnae have those leftover cabbage rolls for breakfast.”
There are so many plot twists, not about whodunnit, but about how they were thwarted and caught, that it stretches the reader’s imagination to foresee how there could not be a lot of unexplained details at the end. But there are no loose ends and the seemingly fortuitous chance happenings all fall in place logically.
It is not strictly necessary to have read the two previous Fallis novels featuring Angus McLintock to enjoy and understand this one, but they do form a natural progression. The setting, largely in the downtown and eastern suburbs of Ottawa, adds accurate local colour and atmosphere, and the intrigue and backstabbing that is politics 101 is conveyed convincingly.
A throughly enjoyable read from one of my favourite novelists.
Thanks,
Janet.
The Passionate Reader 