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Two young men from the Maritime provinces volunteer to spend six months as part of the Canadian contingent of the UN peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslavia. Within a few years after their return, they are both dead. Ten years after the second one is killed in a bar room brawl, the body of a woman who had been the fiancée of one of them is discovered under a viaduct near the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Back in 1993, Daniel Oliver, looking for adventure, convinced his more serious friend Ian MacDonald to join the peacekeeping force for a six-month tour. After investigating, Ian agrees. Six months in the former Yugoslavia will give him enough cash to pay for veterinary school and get him out of the hard scrabble life of a farmer in Nova Scotia. Within three years of returning to Canada, both boys are dead. Ian of a shotgun 'accident' and shortly thereafter, Daniel by a lucky punch thrown in a bar. His girlfriend tries to keep her life together and disappears, until her body is found, ten years later. Inspector Michael Green of the Ontario Provincial Police passes by a crime scene on his way to work one day and gets into the middle of the investigation of the death of Patricia Ross. He is tired of administrative work anyway and his team is stretched because most of them are investigating another major crime. The death of Ms Ross leads Green back to those days when two young innocent boys were exposed to the wartime conditions experiences by the so-called peacekeepers and forward to the candidacy of a retired army officer for a seat in Parliament. Although the book is ostensibly a police procedural crime novel, I found myself thinking of the parallels of how the lives of young men and women are changed by war, usually not for the better. Fradkin brings this home by using a journal from those months in Croatia as a counterpoint to the investigation carried on in the present. This is a very thought-provoking book masquerading as a more or less traditional police procedural.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, October 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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