Chris Altieri seems to have everything to live for: he’s a partner in a thriving Regina, Saskatchewan law firm, and he’s close to his partners, who have been his best friends since their first week of law school. But on the halcyon Canada Day at the lake that amateur investigator Joanne Kilbourn meets Chris for the first–and only–time, he is marinating in guilt and regret.
Chris seems willing to talk to Jo about his struggles, but they’re interrupted by a charismatic defense lawyer from Chris’s firm, Zach Shreve, making his first appearance in the series. The two lawyers and Jo have a mutual friend, Kevin Hynd, who has loaned Joanne and her kids his cottage for the summer while he treks through Nepal and India and re-considers his profession.
The cottages scattered in a horseshoe around the lake provide a safe and gated community for the law firm partners and their families. Jo is soon uncomfortably aware that she has been made granted temporary status as one of the elect. She bristles, however, at the apparent elitism of the partners who, despite their personal charms, seem overly invested in their law school days’ “winners’ circle” moniker.
Chris’s sudden death, which Jo tries to prevent, sets off a series of events. Jo is drawn into the lives of the law partners and learns some unsavoury professional and personal secrets linked to the sudden disappearance of a young female lawyer from their firm. Her friends are searching for her, and they’ve been stymied by her former employer, which refuses to divulge any information.
This is a novel I struggle with, in some ways, because while the plotting and dialogue are as accomplished as ever in Bowen’s excellent series (this is number nine), there’s a portrayal of an Indigenous woman, Lily Falconer, that (to me, at least) repeats some unfortunate tropes about doomed and tragic fates of Indigenous peoples. This is a Canadian literary tradition with a long and wretched history, and it’s part of a discourse that accepts that inevitability of Canadian “progress” and Indigenous assimilation–or disappearance.
Lily’s a fascinating figure. The crisp, accomplished office manager of Falconer Shreve, she’s been with the lawyers since the beginning of their practice, and she’s married to Blake Falconer, one of the partners, and shares a child with him, the ebullient Grace, who’s as comfortable on her mother’s home reserve as she is on the basketball court. Jo’s adopted daughter Taylor becomes close to Grace and her long-time friend, the daughter of another partner, who is as intense and high-strung as her mother Delia Wainberg.
But of all the law partners, it’s Zach Shreve, reputed “Prince of Darkness,”with a storied past of multiple sexual partners, who appeals–surprisingly–to Jo. Within days of their first meeting, they are a couple, and readers of the series will know that they soon marry and Zach adapts with profound commitment to life as a family man. Perhaps the least significant fact about Zach, a man of voracious passions, is that he has been a wheelchair-user since a childhood car accident. But Bowen is at her best in depicting disability.
Back to Lily Falconer, for just a moment. I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, so I’ll just add that it turns out Lily is closely connected to Jo’s former lover, Regina detective Alex Kequahtooway. He’s a wonderful character: richly developed and complex. His on-again off-again relationship with Joanne, and his close ties to his family and home community, are portrayed with insight and nuance.
But then there’s his fate in this novel, which troubles me. It’s a fascinating decision on Bowen’s part, and many aspects of it are resonant and symbolic. There’s also a callback to Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly. But I was sorry to see how Bowen wrapped up Jo and Alex’s complicated love story.
The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction 