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It is Christmas time in Regina, Saskatchewan, and that means what it means anywhere that Christmas is a public holiday - a hectic round of school concerts, last-minute shopping, tree-decorating and baking. Though Joanne Kilbourn has only one child, Taylor, still living at home, the university professor and occasional television presenter is not exempt from the usual carryings-on. The run-up to Christmas becomes infinitely more complicated when a strange woman hands her baby over to one of Taylor's schoolmates and disappears, only to be discovered later on, raped and strangled in a parked car. The child, it turns out, has a close connection with a partner in Joanne's husband's law firm and much of the plot involves discovering what exactly that connection is and why the young woman chose to abandon her baby in so unexplained a fashion and who should be granted custody of the orphan. Curiously, the question of how and why she was killed is pursued with considerably less vigour, though it is, of course, revealed at the end. There is a reason for this lack of emphasis. Gail Bowen is interested far more in relationships than in crime, in expanding the richly-textured domestic life of the Kilbourns and their friends and family. The controlling image in this book is a set of matryoshka dolls, the familiar Russian toy comprised of a series of nesting figures. Here it stands for the hidden secrets within families that, when ferociously kept, can eventuate in violence. I very much like Bowen's novels, even if at times I lose patience with the sometimes exhausting goodness and talent of the Kilbourn clan. But they represent something fairly rare in crime fiction - they are unapologetically, uncompromisingly Canadian. The domestic life they detail is, if a bit idealized, never cliched. Kilbourn's Regina, Saskatchewan circle all lead lives of urbanity, sophistication, and grace. But their wealth cannot protect them from sorrow, loss, or desperation and Bowen always reminds the reader that our comfortable lives may be shattered at any moment by the unforeseen or our own folly. Even though THE NESTING DOLLS was published in mid-August, it really might better have been scheduled for the holiday season; it is a Christmas book, and I suppose it has an appropriate Christmas message. Those who have been following the fortunes of Joanne Kilbourn over the years will certainly not want to wait until December to read it all the same. § Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, August 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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