The Ottawa lawyer and real estate agent here leaves Inspector Ramirez behind to detail a story with lots of local colour for denizens of Ottawa, with complaints about the landscape, the public Transportation with the dysfunctional LRT, the Freedom Convoy and more; everything locals love to complain about.
A fat Afghanistan coroner, an indigenous cop on homicide duty, the fiasco of the Freedom Convoy Protesters blockade of downtown Ottawa streets in 2022, an hallucinating female detective with a troubled background, synesthesia, a trans murder victim, the mayor of Ottawa involved with kickbacks and a troubled marriage, and a homeless kind man all contribute to make this story interesting. To top it off, a Russian hitman arrives only to find that the victim has already been shot.
By page 200, it seems obvious who hired the contract hitman, but the details of the motive are still a bit fuzzy, and a second missing person has arisen and then a third.
I found only one problem with the complex plot: the anatomy of the victim which would not easily facilitate an affair with a supposedly straight man.
There is also one unsolved minor loose end. What became of the long lost biological brother of the troubled female detective?
As murder mysteries go, this is better, in my opinion than Amy Stuart’s A Death at the Party
4.0/5
Thanks, Kit?
The Passionate Reader 