Things We Do In The Dark. Jennifer Hiller. 2022. 342 pages. (Paperback.)
Murder mysteries are not in the top tier of my favourite genres of novels. But when I read the opening line of this one from an Oakville-based Filipino-Canadian, I thought I would enjoy it. “There’s a time and place for erect nipples, but the back of a Seattle police car definitely isn’t it.” The title is from the very popular fictional podcast of a black Toronto investigative journalist.
All the usual standard devices of the genre are here, including many time shifts, false leads, sexual violence, gangs, booze, drugs, nosy self-appointed investigators, multiple murders and deaths that appear to be accidental and unconnected but aren’t, false identities and clueless police. The author makes good use of her Filipino identity and knowledge of that culture to star two down-on-their-luck Filipino teenage girls working in a sleazy strip tease joint/bordello in Toronto, and the Filipino trophy fourth wife of an aging TV star comedian in Seattle, accused of his murder. The eight years the author lived in Seattle helps enlighten that connection. Novelists naturally tend to set their stories in places they are familiar with, though possibly less so since it became so easy to research unfamiliar sites online. It is not hard for readers to deduce the connection between the Toronto and Seattle murders by about page 115, only to be proven wrong 60 pages later.
There are no likeable characters except for a very caring social worker, an efficient crown attorney, and a female detective. The main characters are all violent pedophiles, criminals, psychopaths or serial killers. None are as gruesomely evil as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs but there are more of them than in that Thomas Harris classic.
The plot is exceedingly complex with as many unpredictable sudden twists and turns as the flight path of an outhouse fly.
There is one unexplained occurrence that readers are apparently not supposed to pick up on. How did a Seattle woman on bail for suspected murder, wearing an unremovable GPS-tracking ankle bracelet, even with fake ID, manage to cross the border to Vancouver for a round trip to Ontario to retrieve the ashes of her doppelgänger?
One enigmatic quote: “Polite rudeness is a difficult skill to master.”
The number of highly unlikely coincidences and twists dampened the enjoyment of the story for this realist, although I give the author top marks for her creative imagination that ties all of the loose ends together by the end.
Enough murder mystery for the year for me.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/10
Thanks, Alana.
The Passionate Reader 