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Two years have passed since the murder of Gavin, the son of Toronto police detective Charlie McKelvey. He still hasn't been able to come to terms with his loss, both as a father and as a cop, feeling guilty on both counts for failing to notice Gavin's distress and help him. He manages to hang on by focusing on the man he is convinced is the murderer, one Pierre Duguay, head of a criminal biker gang. This fixation causes rifts between him and his wife who is intent on healing and moving on with her life, and with his coworkers. The best part of the story lies in this internal conflict slowly eroding McGalvey's sanity. Will he give in to vengeance? Will he find a road to recovery? A major health problem provides the Force with a motive to force him into early retirement. His new freedom and the meeting of a young prostitute will allow him to fully explore his situation and decide the outcome. The skeleton of the story proves to be very interesting but the fleshing out is weaker. Forrest has a tendency to resort to flashbacks way too often. The merest event, no matter how trivial, suffices to plunge McKelvey into the past from his childhood to 1999 when the story takes place. There is some present actions and interactions at times – and they are very well done – but most of the book is of the 'tell don't show' school of writing which can become quite tedious and fail to keep the reader interested. Only three characters are well-defined: McKelvey, self-centered and monomaniacal, Duguay who also reminisces too often even though we are told that he is a man who lives in the present and doesn't look back, and Jessie, the prostitute. A big plus is that those characters are all depicted as human with both violent and tender streaks. Forrest's research is first rate. However, we could have done without quite so much information regarding the structure of biker gangs and their wars and the life of a young prostitute. For a first mystery, THE WEIGHT OF STONES shows great promise despite its weaknesses so I was happy to learn that it would be the first of a series which I intend to follow. Recommended to readers interested in the criminal bikers world and the inner conflicts of humans.
Reviewed by Nicole Leclerc, May 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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