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Joanne Kilbourn, academic and part-time TV personality, enjoys a warm and affectionate family life, a loving circle of accomplished and civilized friends, and, lately, an exuberant sex life with her recent partner, paraplegic defence counsel Zack Shreve. Nevertheless, ugly reality has a very bad habit of elbowing its way into what should have been a charmed existence. In this, the tenth in a popular series, it is a book by one of Joanne's colleagues that is the worm in the apple. Katherine Morrissey has written a sensational work based on the confessional interviews she held with the adult offspring of 13 of Canada's most prominent families, interviews that revealed far more about the scars and sadnesses of these wounded people than they had intended to make public. Now the father of one of them and a member of Kilbourn's extensive circle, Sam Parker, is on trial for wounding Morrissey. Parker is a 1960s folksinger turned rich and right-wing. But his conservative 'family values' politics do not impede his love for his son, Glenda, currently undergoing gender reassignment therapy. When Glenda threatens suicide following the publication of the book, Parker springs to her defence, confronting Morrissey and accidentally (his account) or intentionally (hers) shooting her in the shoulder. Sam is defended by Joanne's lover Zack and much of the book is taken up with an account of the trial and with the related questions it raises concerning journalistic ethics. The trial does not end matters, however, and Morrissey is found brutally battered to death on the evening that the verdict is returned. The murder takes place late in the narrative and is quite briskly resolved with a minimum of detection. Indeed, Joanne is hardly an amateur sleuth at all this time out, but more a one-woman support group and general binder-up of wounds both physical and psychological. As the title suggests, this book is much more about the inescapable connection between parent and child than it is about the solving of a crime. Those elements that have won the series a dedicated following are present in full -- the warm depiction of a talented and attractive family, the vivid descriptions of place, and most of all, the generosity of spirit that finds and fosters the humanity in even the most seriously damaged or desperate of people. What is less present here than in the earlier books is the element of detection; the crime is solved with little suspense and no surprise. All the same I suspect that any number of readers will be happy to forgo the thrills of crime and punishment for a visit to the agreeable south Saskatchewan city of Regina, where humane values, family ties, and friendship still appear to flourish, despite the odds.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, August 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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