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This murder mystery is really about two people falling in love and separated by an ocean. And so, while RCMP investigator Liz Forsyth, in Ottawa, is looking into the assassinations of Chechen immigrants, and while Stephen Hay seeks possible motive for the murder of a young, obese woman, the police procedurals seem to be only a small part of what is really going on.
Dramatis personae: Laila Sergeyeva Daudova, Chechen immigrant protesting before the Russian embassy, but not for long; Rasul, her grieving husband; Vladimir Kraznikov, wily Russian ambassador; Bula, Laila's missing brother, perhaps killed by Russians; Sophie Bouchard, a corpse in Battersea; her grieving mother; René Bouchard, her father, mysteriously in Holland at the time of Sophie's death; Forsyth and Hay, separated by an ocean, yet not.
It is the year 1998. The Chechens have sought their independence, and the Russians have suppressed their bid for freedom. Tiny bands of Chechens find themselves far from their native lands, moored and stranded on cold continents, surrounded by people utterly unlike themselves. The presence of the Russian embassy in Ottawa, hiding its be-coated and suave Ambassadors, whose faces hide we-don't-know-what, is ominous. Before the embassy, a parade of protestors holds signs which picture the names and faces of their beloved, missing ones. A shot rings out… the snow falls and falls. Whether the murder represents international intrigue of the highest order or someone getting even for low personal reasons is for Liz Forsyth, RCMP, to discover.
Meanwhile in London, a corpse has appeared in Battersea. The naked and the dead lies inappropriately on the grass on a perfectly average morning near average shrubbery after an average night on the town. Why she might be lying where she is, and why she was targeted, and not someone else, is a question Stephen Hay must find the answer to.
Throughout their investigations, Forsyth and Hay are on each other's minds. As rational adults, they know that their work is important, that their skills are unique and needed for justice. Yet still the heart calls.
Bron's writing is spare, quiet, and realistic. I fault this early novel of hers, however, on a hallmark of its realism: it just ends. Life does just end, and days and winters just end, too. Nevertheless, we readers have come to count on writers to write for cause. Quietness, unsolved mysteries, and unresolved passions may just leave too many balls in the air for this reviewer.
§ Cathy Downs is professor of English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and a fan of the well-turned whodunit.
Reviewed by Cathy Downs, December 2014
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