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This is Maureen Jennings' third expedition into the darker side of late 19th-century Toronto, and Acting Detective William Murdoch once again has to look into puzzling events on his patch. Murdoch is not in a cheerful moodã-he still grieves for his dead fiancÈe and he has a terrible toothache that he is afraid to have treated. Moreover, any hopes the detective may have of relieving his still-virginal condition are clouded by the fact that his likeliest prospect, the widowed Mrs Jones, is a Baptist, while Murdoch is a Roman Catholic, if only a lukewarm one. His general gloom is only deepened by the rain and by the evident suicide of the young police constable, Oliver Wicken, who appears to have shot himself with his service revolver following a failed love affair. Wicken leaves behind his mother and a seriously handicapped baby sister; the coroner's verdict of suicide means that they cannot collect on his life insurance policy. Near the building in which Wicken's body was found resides a troubled and remarkably foul-mouthed family, the Eakins. The young Mrs Peg Eakins, wife of the elderly widower, Nathaniel, is being bundled off to the local insane asylum just as Murdoch comes to inquire into Wicken's death, and indeed appeals in vain to him for help. These two stories alternate, shifting between Peg's and Murdoch's point of view until they converge at the climax of the book. While the relevance of the title, a quotation from King Lear, never becomes apparent, the various plot elements give Jennings the opportunity to inform us about the treatment of the insane in the period (nowhere near as bad as you might imagine), dental practice (emerging from the dark ages) and the functioning of the coroner's court. Nor does she neglect the general and unexamined racism of the period, especially as directed against "Chinamen." Though the period detail is of some interest, the book moves rather ponderously toward its conclusion, a slowness of pace perhaps accentuated by the generally joyless and certainly damp Toronto climate. Even the brothel seems to be run by Presbyterians. No wonder some of its inmates view Montreal as a blessed escape. Readers of Anne Perry will feel at home in Jennings' Toronto and may even prefer it to Perry's London, since it lacks the conspiracies and cabals that have marked Perry's later work. Poor Tom has been selected as one of the Drood Review's favourite mysteries of 2001. A paperback reprint will be issued by McClelland & Stewart in June of this year.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, July 2002
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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