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Fans of the Russell Quant private investigation series have come to expect the same formula with each new novel. It will be one part mystery, one part travelogue, and one part personal history. The present case does not disappoint, though it never plumbs the emotional depths or creates the fireworks that earlier cases have. But then, even Chandlers nod. What we have here is a good piece of workmanship that, more than anything, carries Russell's own story along. The mystery starts out seemingly as an homage to Agatha Christie. It opens with a card addressed to the detective: "You are invited to the death of Nayan Gupta." Shades of A MURDER IS ANNOUNCED. But it turns out to be nothing of the sort. Rather it is the rather bizarre way Nayan's father claims Russell's attention. Nuyan was murdered in Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates, and his body is being returned to Saskatoon. His father is convinced that Nuyan, who more usually went by the Anglo name Neil, was killed by religious homophobes while he was searching out rare carpets for part of a new collection to be housed at the University of Saskatchewan. Therefore, he wants a gay investigator to travel to Dubai to find the truth. Unnati Gupta, Neil's stepmother, warns Russell that her husband's desire for vengeance has clouded his judgment; she accepts the police ruling that it was simply a deadly mugging. After Russell arrives in Dubai, posing as Neil's replacement and accompanied by his truly knowledgeable cousin, Hema Gupta, he begins to wonder if there is a third explanation. After exploring different corners of clandestine gay life in the emirate and finding nothing particularly menacing, he starts focusing on the notes that Neil left behind and the carpet trade itself. What is the nature of this mythical Zinko carpet that he hears rumors about? But then, just to confuse matters, why was Neil so concerned about locating saffron? Also, as Hema's actions become more and more inexplicable, Russell wonders what game she is playing. The search for answers leads him into real physical danger, first in the Arabian deserts and then, upon his return, in the frozen depths of a Canadian lake. The final, almost comic, showdown reveals the true motive behind the killings that have occurred. Professor C. Hugh Holman, himself a very minor writer of detective stories, once observed during a course I took with him that the local color genre continues to be a prominent feature of many mystery stories. So it is here. The Russell Quant series has taken us to France, on a Mediterranean cruise, on a safari in southern Africa, and now to the Arabian peninsula. On each trip we learn a lot about food (Russell: "I was reminded — as I too often am — how much I love food"), customs, landscape, architecture, dress, language. (By the way, a sheesha is a hookah or waterpipe.) A journey outside the safe and the ordinary led Russell to real personal insight in SUNDOWNER UBUNTU. Here the reader gets only travelogue: geographic information made palatable by mystery plot. Where Anthony Bidulka has always taken his greatest risks — and on this score I must always admire him even when I think his success has been inconsistent — is giving so much prominence in his novels to Russell's own personal growth and to his sometimes complex relationships with his family and friends. This aspect of the series goes beyond merely having recurring characters. These characters are rounded, fully developed in their own right: they change, go through their own traumas, and take on different roles in Russell's life. Sometimes we may feel, in fact, that we know more about them than we do about the narrator of the series.. Bidulka is a tricky fellow; one must never try to outguess what is up his sleeve. But I sense that he has reached a dangerous moment in the development of his character. Russell is nearing forty. In his early thirties he was still dating; in his late thirties he became serious about two different men, unfortunately at almost the same time, and had to choose one. But Russell remains deeply afraid of commitment. When he tells one of his friends about his new job in Dubai, she explodes: "My god, you're doing it again, aren't you? ... You're running away.... You've been skirting around getting into a serious relationship for so long, you don't even know you're doing it." This aspect of Russell's character is only too authentic; he reminds me more than a little of my own nephew. But I wonder how long a detective who understands his own personal motivations so little, especially a first-person narrator, can continue to hold readers' interest. No matter what George Eliot thought, literature does more than just hold up a mirror to life. It provides us model and inspiration. When will the African epiphany actually penetrate Russell's psyche? The fact that the novel takes my mind into such wayward paths attests to the power of the writing. But each new Bidulka novel is now inevitably going to be judged against his own earlier work. The series presently stands as a rather awkward combination of the brilliant and the customary, challenged to find its next great breakthrough case. §Drewey Wayne Gunn, Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University-Kingsville, is author of The Gay Male Sleuth in Print and Film (Scarecrow Press, 2005) and editor of The Golden Age of Gay Fiction (MLR Press, 2009), a collection of essays, including his own "Down These Queer Streets a Man Must Go," and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Benjamin Franklin Award.
Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, May 2010
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