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A body washes up beside the houseboat of a party of Americans anchored on the Lake of the Woods, Ontario. The corpse is that of the local bully, Scarth Krohn. The Americans happen to be two Chicago police detectives, Paul Turner and Buck Fenwick, and their families: Paul’s lover, Ben, and two sons and Buck’s wife and two daughters. Also along is Paul’s friend and former lover, Ian Hume, a Chicago-based investigative reporter. The nine have come for a week of fishing when their vacation is disrupted. Paul has earlier had a run-in with Scarth and his gang, first when they viciously attack a group of Native Americans on a corner of a restaurant parking lot, then when they return to hurl homophobic slurs at him and Ben. Summoned to the scene, the local police chief proves to be himself racist, homophobic, and more than a little xenophobic. After the death he also proves that his biases prevent him from investigating with an open mind. Is Scarth’s drowning a case of murder or an accident? Is it connected with the deaths of six college students who have drowned in the lake during the past four years? Paul and Buck decide to interrogate people with connections to the dead youth on their own, acting rather improbably as if they were still in Chicago, while Ian goes off to conduct his own probe. By this point, the novel has drawn up some interesting scenarios about the nature of hatred, the specter of Matthew Shepherd hanging over several scenes, though it has used little if any psychological complexity in developing them. But rather than delving deeper into these issues, the novel now becomes a series of superficial set pieces: questions and answers between the two detectives and some 20-odd people connected to Scarth, written in a form that could transfer intact to stage presentation. Take Chapter 17 as a random example. It opens with a paragraph establishing the setting and introducing Paul and Buck’s witness. There follow 38 paragraphs of dialogue, along with a few stage directions and one paragraph telling us what Paul is thinking at one point. A new witness having been introduced at the end of the scene, there follow ten paragraphs of more of the same (one paragraph a lengthy monologue), again with one paragraph telling us what Paul is thinking about the man. In neither instance do Paul’s thoughts shed any light on the investigation itself. All the dialogue does is establish that Scarth was an utterly worthless human. The chapter concludes with six paragraphs of dialogue between Paul and Buck in which they state the obvious and set up their next interview. To a person the locals present Scarth in stark black or white terms. He was either some kind of monster protected by his super-wealthy father or an athletic saint who inspired his fellow hockey players to new greatness, an abuser of his girlfriend, a junkie whom he impregnated along with her mother, and a gay-basher (while being a closet fag) or a chivalrous hero who sometimes took a prank a bit far. Such cardboard characters can offer little more than superficial interest to readers. In the previous Paul Turner mystery, NERDS TO WATCH OUT FOR (2005), a science fiction writer was described thus: "She started out raw, but with tremendous potential. She’s working her way to mediocre." Zubro could have been describing his own career. He was never a first-rate mystery writer, but everything he published through 1997 was worth reading, and at least three of these novels were nearly perfect. Nothing he has published since has been worth considering, the novels from 1998 on so inferior one might suspect a different author. Still, his two series must have a loyal base of fans. This is his 20th book, the ninth in the Paul Turner series. For a moment I thought it might even regain some of the power of the earlier books. Paul’s confrontation with both subtle homophobia and rampant gay-hate in the midst of liberal Canada seemed a promising premise on which to launch the plot. His discovery that he knows less about his older son’s sexuality than he thought he did predicted some interesting curves ahead, the possibility of greater psychological complexity. But the latter fizzled out with our learning little about Brian’s motivations for his actions, and the former went flat fairly quickly, lost among platitudes and one-dimensional characters. Even the not entirely surprising identification of the killer reverberates with far less impact than it should have, especially given the motive. However, I can say, in all honesty, that the present novel is an enormous improvement over his previous one, EVERYONE’S DEAD BUT US (2006). Is there hope yet we may one day have the old Zubro back in command?
Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, July 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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