Miss Montreal, the latest instalment in Howard Shrier’s Jonah Geller P.I. series, is a great crime romp through our city.
Shrier gets Montreal right. The grittiness, the contradictions, the corruption, the politics — even the potholes get a full airing.
At the outset, Toronto private investigator Geller reminisces about a childhood friend, Sammy Adler, a boy he met at summer camp the year he turned 12.
Shrier’s depiction hits home; a reflection on the summers of our youths, the eternal angst of middle teens. Adler is uncoordinated, but with the camp championship on the line, Geller successfully makes a baseball player out of him, bestowing his protegé with the nickname Slammin’ Sammy.
Geller would not hear that name again, just another summer-camp friendship fading with time, until Slammin’ Sammy’s grandfather calls looking for help. Looking, more specifically, for an investigator who could explain exactly what had happened in Montreal to leave his grandson beaten to death with a Star of David carved in his chest.
Geller takes the case and drives down to Montreal with former contract killer Dante Ryan in tow. Jenn Raudsepp, Geller’s regular partner in their World Repairs private investigation agency, is on leave. Ryan is Geller’s muscle, with a penchant for Glocks. They arrive in Montreal with St. Jean Baptiste Day fast approaching.
Shrier’s familiarity with the journalistic milieu is apparent. While sifting through Slammin’ Sammy’s life, Geller learns that his childhood friend had covered the urban affairs beat for Montreal Moment magazine — and through discussions with Adler’s former editor-in-chief, Holly Napier, we soon realize that the late reporter may have made some enemies along the way.
Before his demise, Slammin’ Sammy was working on three files: a story about an Afghan family’s adjustment to life in Quebec; a profile of the appropriately named QAQ (Québec aux Québécois) leader Laurent Lortie, a right-winger none too welcoming to foreigners; and a third file with the enigmatic title of Miss Montreal.
“Shrier has not lost his handle on
what makes Montreal and Quebec tick.”
The Miss Montreal file is empty, and the seductive name betrays little information.
Shrier, who studied at Concordia but now resides in Toronto, has not lost his handle on what makes Montreal and Quebec tick.
Lortie’s character, for example, adopts policy positions straight out of recent headlines and touches on recurring themes in Quebec society.
Shrier’s plot coalesces into a smorgasbord of smugglers, drug dealers, bombers and Quebec politics, with our Fête nationale thrown in for good measure.
From old departed haunts like Rockhead’s Paradise to Schwartz’s legendary deli, Shrier gives us many Montreal tableaus, past and present.
Miss Montreal is the fourth novel in the Jonah Geller P.I. series, the previous one being 2012’s Boston Cream. For more information on the writer, visit howardshrier.com. — Francois Lauzon, Montreal Gazette
